Wouldn't knowing to look for it being common sense?
How do things become common sense Bob? Someone needs to teach it to them. You're relying on people being taught not only financial information, but also how to problem solve. In case you haven't noticed, schools do a shit job at teaching problem solving and critical thinking as well, especially because it often isn't an explicit part of the curriculum.
That isn't the main issue though. Going back to something you said earlier
At some point there has to be some personal responsibility there, as the government can't provide a person accountant for every citizen.
Ignoring the fact that A.I. might actually be able to actually do that soon, you have the classic attitude of personal responsibility being necessary for someone's life. Your life is your responsibility. While this may be true to an extent, in practicality people get screwed over by forces outside their control far too often for it to automatically be what one should assume.
This point of view is called an internal locus of control, and it is very useful in motivating people to keep trying to help themselves despite the odds. The insidious thing about our culture is how it is used to keep people from fully interrogating our unfair system. It's a foundational belief that is inaccurate on a few levels.
First, people are not in control of ourselves to a larger extent than we'd like to believe. Even Freud could tell that certain desires and impulses control our behavior more than our conscious mind. On one hand, things like fear and hunger can override our consciousness to make us act illogical. On the other, societal training and preconceived notions can cloud our perception and make us conform to societal notions we don't even support. Things like gut bacteria and environmental factors can totally change the way we think or what we want.
Bigger still, we are all biologically and neurologically different. Some people are born with a diminished capacity for controlling their impulses, understanding certain concepts, or thinking in certain ways. Some people just won't get financial management until the 100th time it's explained to them. Some people will have trouble getting themselves to do things they don't enjoy, even if they want to and hate themselves for not being able to. Some people are born dyslexic, have exceptional trouble doing basic math, or have other disabilities. There are way more of these people than you think, and without the proper resources, have trouble doing the things you seem to assume are within everyone's capabilities.
The thing is, most people with disabilities can be productive members of society, some even more productive than average. There's a fine line between disability and advantage. Some people are born unlucky, having a net lack of merit in a meritocracy. Under the current system only disabled people with a wealthy enough family can become high enough functioning to not fucking die from how they were born. Some people will always need help, that they currently only get if their family can support them.
When you were talking about small business owners struggling, you were missing my point. I wasn't talking about 95% of business owners. I was talking about the 1% of business owners who have the majority of the wealth. They may have capital, but they have more in common with the working class than the people lucky enough to win Monopoly. That is what we're playing with the free market capitalism, a game of Monopoly where eventually one person owns everything. Even people with the same start as the eventual winner can end up with nothing based on pure luck. The game was made by a socialist to demonstrate this truth, true fact.
The ultimate lesson is that luck defines most things, from your merit to your ability to even make choices. This doesn't mean we stop trying, it means we need to make a society where people without "merit" don't die for being cosmicaly unlucky. Where we use modern technology from teaching ideas to surgeries and drugs to make sure no one is left behind. We need to ultimately force the lucky to not let people needlessly suffer. This means redistribution. Fuck who earns it, no one fully earns so much power.