April is Financial Literacy Month, and most of the conversation is about teaching kids the basics. Saving, spending, and hopefully a little investing.

But by the time most people really need financial literacy, they’re making expensive decisions without enough of it. I’m talking about five-, six-, even seven-figure decisions that shape how the next 10 or 20 years play out.

It’s striking how many smart, capable people tend not to ask enough questions right when they should be digging in. Think about your own instincts for a second:

When the market drops sharply, do you feel more inclined to pull money out, stay invested, or take a step back and consider investing while prices are low?

When you hear about a “new opportunity” or private investment, do you pull the trigger feeling like you might be missing something big and important if you don’t jump at the chance in the moment?

Those first reactions matter a lot more than people realize. There’s a meaningful gap between the returns individual investors earn owning stocks, and what the stock market actually returns. DALBAR, an investment research firm that studies investor behavior, has shown for years that individuals consistently earn a few percentage points less than the overall market. That doesn’t sound like much, but over time it means hundreds of thousands of dollars you never capture.

That’s financial literacy in adult life. Why not slow down and ask questions like what’s driving this decision? What am I not considering? Who benefits from me saying yes to this?

When people admit they’ve made a bad decision, they tell me they weren’t willing to pause long enough to ask any questions because they didn’t know what to ask. And often it’s when they lean on someone else who appears to be ‘smarter than they are.’ But in many of those situations, that someone else hadn’t been properly vetted, the advice was not in their best interest, and now they feel self-conscious about their next decision. (If you’ve been reading Count Up for awhile, you already know why I’m a huge proponent of fee-only, fiduciary advisors—they’re legally bound to act in your best interest).

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This happens every day with retirement plans. The number of choices keeps expanding—Roth or pre-tax, managed accounts, annuities, how much to contribute, how to invest, whether to consider newer, more complex options inside the plan. There’s more access than ever, but also more room to get it wrong if you don’t fully understand what you’re choosing.

I think that’s why this topic matters so much as an adult. Financial literacy is about developing the ability to step back and think clearly when something important is in front of you.

Every time you slow down and ask the questions that help you really understand a decision—how it works, what the tradeoffs are—you’re better equipped for the next one. Patterns start emerging and you can recognize situations you’ve seen before. You get more comfortable asking the right questions, which then delivers better results.

Take this approach when you’re in your 30s and by the time you’re getting closer to retirement, that financial literacy has compounded over the years. This becomes incredibly valuable at retirement and beyond. You’ve learned to not react at the moment. Instead you’re making decisions with context and perspective.

Someone once told me that the quality of the answer you get is only as good as the question you ask. That stuck with me. I was lucky—I became interested in money and investing early enough that I didn’t care if I asked “dumb” questions. (And I asked plenty of them).

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And this applies to asking for advice from a fee-only advisor. An outstanding fiduciary advisor will encourage you to ask more questions because that advisor knows the more knowledgeable you become over time, the better your conversations will be about the details that impact your future.

That’s what I find myself coming back to this month. As an adult, financial literacy is something you build—over time, through real decisions, in real life.

And it keeps paying you back the more you stay engaged with it.

Count Up With Pam Krueger

Financial Literacy Month Isn’t Just for Kids