To me, this is a really stupid question, but it's always been an issue and I have not found an answer.

How do you know what the level of your character is? There are so many numbers. I've never seen one that just says "level". After I level up, I look over the numbers and everything is increased.

The level is indicated in brackets next to every character (prestige) class, just above the stats block. It looks like this:

Sorcerer (14)
Red Dragon Disciple (3)

Which would be a sorcerer level 14 with 3 levels in RDD.

ok, thank you so much. I kind of thought that might be the level .... but wasn't totally sure. thank you.