Books: Financial Intelligence, Financial Modelling and Valuation, Course: A Simple Model, Wall Street Prep, CFI YouTube:
“Financial Intelligence” by Joe Knight
YouTube offers excellent educational channels like Kenji Explains, Corporate Finance Institute, Ed Bodmer, and Eric Andrews, which provide basic content that complements the knowledge gained from “Financial Intelligence.”
As you become more comfortable with financial principles, “Financial Modeling and Valuation” by Paul Pignataro is an invaluable resource. It’s advanced, so I recommend familiarizing yourself with foundational concepts first.
Finally, the Corporate Finance Institute offers both free and paid resources suitable for those with some financial background. Their courses filled in some gaps in my knowledge, especially concepts clarified by the “Financial Modeling” book.
Kanji explains the three statement model saved my ass.
Practice. Practice. Practice. Find templates to download from places like corporate finance institute or Wall Street prep.
Excel and PowerPoint are your tools.
Recreate the templates. Learn the functions by practicing them.
More practice.
This is a tedious and high stakes job. Nothing is really “complicated “ with the math, but one little error in a model makes you look like a fool.
More practice.
Working 70 hours a week making models.
More practice.
F1F9 is a financial modeling standard. Their courses are online and pretty reasonable. That’s the standard we followed when I was in FP&A and I still use many of those basics today when I build any kind of excel template for anything.
Doing the FMVA course is the most straightforward way to find out if it’s for you.
You will learn all the basics in 100 hours & get quality model templates, to keep.
It’s also flexible to learn in your own time.
I agree with this, the FMVA course from CFI is good.
Great to hear you’re diving into financial modeling! Don’t worry—32 is definitely not too late to switch gears in finance.
Since you already know Excel, structured courses like Wall Street Prep or Breaking Into Wall Street can help you build real-world models. If you prefer hands-on learning, consider financial modeling boot camps—NYC has great in-person options like CEI or Wall Street Training.
Internships at this stage might not be the norm, but they can still open doors. Be ready for some curious questions, but those can lead to interesting opportunities. Also, network like it’s your second job—attend finance meetups, connect with professionals, and explore the PE space. A good conversation can go a long way!
Good luck—you got this!
personally found taking one of the online modeling courses to be the best route to go. The big ones are BIWS and WSP - they have a range of courses that can take you pretty well from a beginner to knowing how to model. It is a skill, however, and one you should practice even beyond the courses. If you don’t care about the certification and just want to learn, I can get you nearly all of the Wall Street Prep courses (including their entire Premium Package) for super cheap! Send me a message!
Lots of practice questions. Peak frameworks is a good YouTube channel that has digestible videos too
If you’re serious you need to know how to code. No serious modeling is done in Excel these days. And generic training is fine. We hire undergrads off campus and put them to work coding Python models on day 1.
A while ago I thought on doing any of these programs. However, I found a pretty solid material in YouTube with Rareliquid guy ex JP Morgan explain pretty well. DCF, paper LBO, Three financial statements. Also, SkymasBro if you want to go more in depth with LBO. After watching this guys honestly it was pretty easy to teach myself without paying the $300plus dollars for these courses. This is only my honest opinion everyone has a different way to teach themselves
BIWS is great for the PDFs but the video content is far far too long. The PDF guides are superb though and worth the price alone.
Honestly - A Simple Model is your best bet. Then you can adjust that and add additional detail accordingly.
Reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/financialmodelling/comments/1fcl1e2/sharing_a_financial_model_ive_built/
The basic skillset is mostly learnt from (reputable) paid courses eg BreakingIntoWallStreet, WallStreetOasis, CFI, WallStreet Prep
The rest was trial and error, competitions, internships etc
Paid courses generally have a good step-by-step for FM. BreakingIntoWallStreet, WallstreetPrep, CFI’s FMVA, WSO FM course as well. I personally used CFI’s FMVA which taught me everything I knew. Tried BIWS and the content was similar. I have seen indirectly the models & content of the other courses and they are similar as well! No means a promotion to any of them. Unfortunately have yet to find any good free resources with regards to modelling :(
Definitely a good start, however not as comprehensive as current popular/mainstream Modelling courses such as CFI, WallstreetPrep and Breaking into Wallstreet, Wallstreet Oasis Prep.
I’ve taken a second look at the course, and in all honesty, it’s quite far from current industry standards. Would really encourage your team to take a look at other popular courses (mentioned above) if you are planning to charge people for this course.
The DCF model is really barebones and brief. 3FS does not seem to be linked. Figures are not up to date (2019). Poor formatting and readability. No explicit price target. Assumed users have access to bloomberg and cleaned financial statements. No segue into M&A or PE modelling.
MarkMeldrum applied analysis has a modeling course where he does just that. He doesn’t provide any template, and he goes through Costco and CAPREIT (a canadian REIT). On the Costco course he walks through the 10K, the Historical data, and you build the 3-statement step-by-step completely from scratch and all of that. Hope this doesn’t sound like an ad for him, but I have a non-finance background, and it was really helpful to me at least. If anyone has another modeling course that goes like this, please always let us know!
The 90-Minutes 3-statement model from Mergers & Inquisitions / Breaking Into Wall Street on YouTube helps you build the 3-statement from scratch, but that’s all. They don’t go through a 10K, or how to think about the model and how everything links. So depending on your level of knowledge that might be what you’re looking for, but you can still check it out
https://www.reddit.com/r/financialmodelling/comments/1f265xj/microsoft_excels_trace_precedents/
https://www.reddit.com/r/financialmodelling/comments/1io6zq6/ubs_how_to_build_better_models/
Edward bodmer is the way. If you spend 3-5 hours a day working through his videos and books you’ll get pretty solid. https://www.reddit.com/r/financialmodelling/comments/1aevb4d/fundamental_investment_banking_or_financial/
https://www.reddit.com/r/financialmodelling/comments/1msauh8/trying_to_learn_modeling