I have the ability to build a base of financial literacy.

Financial language is not difficult by accident.

A great deal of it is built to be got through rather than understood — the small print sized to discourage, the ordinary-sounding vocabulary that means something slightly other than it does in ordinary speech. People come away assuming they are stupid, when the truth is closer to a document succeeding at its job.

So the not-knowing was never a personal failing. Almost nobody is taught this. It is one of the few genuinely useful subjects that most schools skip completely.

Which also means it is learnable, in the ordinary way, a piece at a time. There is a finite amount of it. It is duller than a hobby and it yields.