“What are the most valuable lessons your generation can learn from the others?”

Seriously? What sort of a dumb question is that? Has to be a Gen Y suggestion!

Like ALL of my fellow Gen Xers, I know everything. As our parents will attest, Gen X has known everything since we turned 13. Maybe since we were eight. But certainly no later than 1979, when Pink Floyd declared the obvious: We Don’t Need No Education.

What could we learn from Gen Y? How to spend money we don’t have on credit cards we should never have been issued?

From Boomers: How to be more self-absorbed than anyone since Henry VIII rewrote the divorce laws? From retirees: How to be a spendthrift (or, in the case of my naughty Grandma, blow the kids’ inheritances with a reverse mortgage?)

The others should learn from us! How to work hard, have bad backs from carrying the nation and shoulder the burden of populating our rather large country with kids we can barely afford because of the monstrous mortgages caused by previous generations.

Okay, I’m kidding. We’re certainly old enough now to admit that we don’t know it all. And we love our parents, grandparents, and our younger siblings.

From Gen Y, we could learn flexibility. While Gen X was the first to have computers from childhood, Gen Y has been fast adopters of everything technological.

Boomers understood that building wealth was done over decades, not years. They have built great wealth because of patience.

And Retirees – Gen X’s parents, bless ’em – we could learn generosity and humility. There are two things we could do with a dose of.

Bruce Brammall is the author of Debt Man Walking (www.debtman.com.au) and a licensed financial adviser.