Being able to read and digest a profit & loss (P&L) statement and a balance sheet. It's not a common skill and yet it's also not particularly difficult; with a

Being able to read and digest a profit & loss (P&L) statement and a balance sheet. It's not a common skill and yet it's also not particularly difficult; with a small bit of self-training you can do it extremely fast. You'll be able to scan the financials for a public company in a minute or two and get a good overview of its financial condition. It's a critical skill for investing and financial independence over time. Nobody showed me how to do that and I didn't have to read any technical books (I point that out because to some people it can be a very mind-numbing, boring subject), I self-taught out of personal interest in the stock market and business in general when I was young. With a few hours of self-education pretty much anyone can learn how; with some practice over time you'll get better and faster at it and reading financials will become second nature. It's a few hours of effort to learn an important part of a simple language (the language of financial literacy) that the vast majority of humanity can't understand and yet it's one of the most valuable languages in existence: the numbers & documents that make up the world of all commerce.