The fact remains that complex numbers are confusing to an extremely large number of people, and negative numbers and 0 aren't. This is probably because 0 can be given direct meaning in terms of everyday applications: I don't have money = I have 0 dollars. I have 0 dollars and I owe you 5 dollars = I have -5 dollars. But what is i dollars? The switch from real to complex is much more complicated than the switch from the naturals to integers or from the integers to the reals. Algebraically, it is also a completely different kind of extension.

i^2 = -1 should be hard to comprehend, and people should be suspicious when things are presented this way. If your experience with equations make it seem easy, I would argue that you don't fully comprehend the significance of such a definition (for example - lets invent a number j such that 1/j = 0. Does this also seem easy?).