When I was a little kid, living under my father’s thumb, and stumbled into a bad situation where I got into trouble, he would always ask that one question that was guaranteed to make me mad: “Son,” he said, time and time again, “what did you learn from this?”

The point of his question, each time, was that mistakes provided perfect opportunities to learn. Ideally, what one learns is to not make that same mistake again. Doesn’t always happen that way, but it’s still a pretty good ideal.

So, my rhetorical question today is this: What lessons are we Americans learning from this recession?

The sad truth is that there are really no new lessons to learn – all of the important financial lessons have been taught to us before, but there is a significant body of evidence that we have willfully chosen to ignore them, from those living paycheck to paycheck all the way up to the millionaires who entrusted their money to Ponzi schemers.

Even though cynically assuming that I am but whistling in the wind, I forge ahead with my review of the lessons we can relearn today. And I hope that you prove my cynicism misplaced.

1. If you have a mortgage, the ONLY kind to have is a 30-year fixed rate mortgage (some of you may prefer a shorter term, especially if the balance is not that high). When a better rate comes along, you should refinance, always maintaining your financial balance. Any of the adjustable rate or interest-only variations are for gamblers and suckers. Should you need a tricky mortgage, then you probably cannot afford that house. And the lender is stupid to make that kind of a loan to you.

2. If an investment is offered to you that seems too good to be true, then it IS too good to be true. In other words, even if Bernie Madoff (who I had never heard of by the way), a Wall Street icon, promises you better than market returns, and even if all of your friends claim that it is true, it is still too good to be true. Oh, it may take years for the scheme to unravel, but unravel it will. Anyone who chases flashy get-rich-quicker schemes is acting on pure greed – and greedy people are immoral. Greedy people eventually suffer economic loss as a result of their greed. It is better for us middle class folks to stick toy a get-rich-slow program, saving at least 10% of our income every year, investing wisely rather than greedily and living within our means. This is the lesson most of us will forget.

3. Owning individual stocks, unless you can afford to lose all or substantially all of the value of that holding, is for fools. I cannot overstate this. And many of you won’t care, either way, for almost all of us has at least a moment of inspiration when we are sure that we can make a killing in the market by buying that one stock what will make us rich. It actually happens almost never. You are better off buying lottery tickets –at least then you’ll know within a few days whether or not your ship came in. What do I need to say to convince you that individual stocks are among the riskiest of investments? Enron? General Motors? AIG? Citigroup? Do you get my point? I know of a person who at age 65 inherited a mess of Bank of America stock about 5 years ago. The single holding constituted about 80% of her net worth of $500,000 (10,000 shares at $40). A colleague advised her to diversify, to get out of the stock market, especially a single stock and take the proceeds to set up cash flow for her retirement, but she just loved the steady dividends bank stocks paid and declined the advice. She recently returned to my friend, in tears because her $400,000 is now worth less than $35,000 and there ain’t no dividends. And she needs cash now. Greed overcame judgment, once again.

Those are the first three lessons I hope we are all learning. Next time, I’ll offer a few more.