I can vouch for this personally. tl;dr - Financial illiteracy really is screwing some people with their pants on. By any reasonable measure, my mom should be

I can vouch for this personally. tl;dr - Financial illiteracy really is screwing some people with their pants on. By any reasonable measure, my mom should be all set. Nothing more than a GED but she has started more than one successful business. Generally, she can drop herself into any town, open a shop for her services (dog grooming), and do great business. She's just really good at it. She's in her 40's now and made a boatload of cash between '03 and '09, before the recession really kicked her business in the teeth. It should be no big deal -- she should have over a $100,000 saved away to smooth out a rough patch like this one. Instead, she lost her house. Instead of keeping the nice, affordable big home she had three minutes from her shop, she increased her commute by 20 minutes in a bigger, more expensive house (with a pool!) she ended up unable to afford. Instead of saving, she bought big TV's, expensive pets, gambling and a Mercedes. Even Christmas of '09, when things were drum-tight, she was buying needless expensive gifts for people. My mom is financially illiterate. When she should have been saving for a rainy day and setting up her retirement, she was blowing a considerable amount of money on stupid things. Worst of all, she has already been down this path – she had to declare bankruptcy back when I was a kid. The other part that sucks: This crap gets passed on. I was financially an idiot for years. Only in the last couple of years have I gotten a frugal grip on my life, and now I get to dig out of some stupid debt decisions.