> One guy goes to work straight out of college, saves strategically, quits and starts his own SAP consultancy in 5 years, and is worth a few million by age 30.

I guess this is me. I fit this rubric, and now I deal with $100k+ sums on a quarterly basis. On an annual level it goes into the hundreds of thousands. I'm by no means wealthy (I do not own significant amounts of property, for example) but I am capable of fundamentally understanding large sums of money on a personal and professional level.

Dealing with money is definitely a skill that is taught. If you don't have parents or a business partner or someone else in your life that teaches you the old-fashioned way (through unflinching and strict discipline and what borders on verbal abuse when you fuck up), you're never going to learn. The credit card companies and banks are not this person/entity.