Knitting with charts

I found this really interesting cardigan in a recent magazine (no details, sorry, cause it's at home and I'm at work).  I really REALLY want to make it but they would have me use charts.  Like five of them.  I thought, ok, I'm reasonably intelligent, I can do this.  But just to be sure before I cast on even a dry run kind of thing, I added all the stitches from all the charts called for in the directions, and came up with ten extra stitches from what the cast on indicated.  Also, in BIG BOLD LETTERS, they told me if I'm making a large size to start the charts right away.  Well, what else would I be doing, and why the heck did they go through the trouble of printing out stitch by stitch directions if they gave me charts to begin with?  I'm so confused I don't even know how to write it all out.  And I'll be damned if some little chart is gonna defeat me!  Its also rather alarming because it seems to be the current trend.  Just about every pattern has a chart of some type.  I HATE CHARTS!

Sorry, rant over.

If anybody has any words of wisdom concerning knitting with charts, I'd love to hear from you.