Comment by matthewmacleod

Nah, that's reductive to the point of being useless. It's like saying "losing weight is simple: eat fewer calories than you burn". It's both completely correct and completely unhelpful.

Broadly, everybody realises that you will accumulate money if you spend less than you earn. That's not financial literacy though – how do you do that? How do you know how much you are earning, and how much you are spending? How can you figure out how to spend less?

Almost 30% of US adults are level 1 or below on the PIAAC numeracy scale – a level at which you can perform only the most basic arithmetic. It is, for many people, far from "pretty easy" or "quite simple".