Big Banks Want You to Be Just Smart Enough

The same institutions making your financial life hell are the ones pushing financial literacy campaigns. Here's how corporate hypocrisy—and aggressive lobbying—helped break the system in the first place.

The same institutions making your financial life hell are the ones pushing financial literacy campaigns. Here's how corporate hypocrisy—and aggressive lobbying—helped break the system in the first place.

Financial Literacy Month is here, and that means big banks are back with helpful tips. How to use your credit card. How to budget better. How to decode your mortgage. It's all very warm and paternal. And it's also complete bullshit.

Let me explain.

If you're overwhelmed by money—by debt, by rising costs, by fine print—the industry wants you to believe it's your fault. You just need to study more. Learn what an ETF is. Read up on amortization schedules. Get smarter, and things will get easier.

But that framing is not just unhelpful. It's dishonest. It blames you for not being able to win a rigged game.

The same institutions that made the system complicated on purpose now want to teach you how to navigate it. Why are credit card agreements so hard to read? Because they want them to be. Why is overdrafting so common? Because banks profit massively off overdraft fees. And why did Citibank move its credit card operations to South Dakota? Because the state repealed its usury laws, allowing the bank to charge sky-high interest rates.

They broke the system—and now they want to teach you how to cope with it. That's not education. That's brand rehab.

Here's a fun fact: one of my clients has a parent who's a financial advisor. That parent kept insisting the smartest move was to pay off their mortgage early. Great in theory. But in this couple's situation? Not necessarily. The early paydown wouldn't make much difference to their long-term finances. It might actually reduce their flexibility—money for travel, community, time off, or career shifts.

Even with a ton of financial knowledge, it's hard to know what to do. Why? Because real financial decisions depend on context, values, tradeoffs. And frankly, many people don't need to learn more. They need a raise. They need childcare that doesn’t cost more than rent. They need a system that wasn’t designed to punish them.

Banks know this. They know if people were truly confident, capable decision-makers, they’d lose money. They’d lose the billions they make in fees, interest, and penalties. So instead, they invest in surface-level solutions that sound nice, shift the blame, and protect the bottom line.

Financial literacy is not inherently bad. But in the mouths of the institutions who profit from your confusion? It’s PR. It’s damage control. It’s a smokescreen. And it’s working.

Let’s not fall for it.