Jennifer is a bookkeeper by trade, not a financial advisor, and she'll tell you that early and often. She started keeping a handwritten ledger when she and her husband were newly married and money was tight, and that ledger is going on eighteen years now.
The retirement piece came slower. She read her own 401k paperwork one January, then read it again because she didn't believe she'd understood it. She kept going, through the vesting schedule and the fee disclosure and the fund names nobody explains.
She teaches this class because nobody explained her employer match to her for three years, and she still remembers how that felt.
