Consumer Debt Quotes

Bad debt is debt that makes you poorer. I count the mortgage on my home as bad debt, because I'm the one paying on it. Other forms of bad debt are car payments, credit card balances, or other consumer loans.

We have been maintaining a standard of living by putting things on the debt of the next generation.

Some people are just stuck in their ways and have been brainwashed into believing that credit cards and debt are an unavoidable part of life.

Of course I'm troubled by huge consumer debt levels - we've pushed consumer credit very hard in the US. Eventually, if it keeps growing, it will stop growing. As Herb Stein said, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." When it stops, it may be unpleasant. Other than Herb Stein's quote, I have no comment. But the things that trouble you are troubling me.

Now people are worried not about the prospects of buying new things, but about how to pay for the things they bought yesterday, a year ago or years before. It is, as Americans like to say, "a wholly different kind of ball-game".

Debt has become a part of who we are.

Those who spend too much will eventually be owned by those who are thrifty.

You can pretty much trace when the big individual indebtedness kicked in, and it was when the credit card became generally available.

The economy has become seriously unbalanced. Its growth has not been driven by investment or by overcoming Britain's long-standing weaknesses in investment and productivity, particularly skills. Instead, there has been a binge of debt-financed consumer spending.

I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom. "Buy a car," it says, "and be free. Buy a boat and be free." Is this not the raw material of bad dreams? Or is it maybe the very nightmare itself?

When I was young, people lived from paycheck to paycheck. Today, it seems like they live from credit card payment to credit card payment.

It's a little hard to go out there and spend your money on a home, car, or goods and services if your wages are being garnished to make debt collectors rich.

Perhaps you are thinking: 'But a tank costs several million dollars, not including floor mats. I don't have that kind of money.' Don't be silly. You're a consumer, right? You have credit cards, right? Perhaps you are thinking: 'Yes, but how am I going to pay the credit-card company?' Don't be silly. You have a tank, right?

You're nothing in America if you don't have debt.

I've always said that the first season was the first act of my feature, so this is what I meant. I wanted the story of 'Mr. Robot' to be Elliot actually accomplishing his goal, setting the world into chaos. What would happen to society if something like this occurred where, basically, if the consumer-debt industry were to be erased?

What our economy needs is direct job creation by the government and mortgage-debt relief for stressed consumers. What it very much does not need is a transfer of billions of dollars to corporations that have no intention of hiring anyone except more lobbyists.

There is simply no way to sustain an economy based on consumer credit.

Today, there are three kinds of people: the haves, the have-nots, and the have-not-paid-for-what-they-haves.

I'm constantly questioning the effects technology has had on our lives and the effect that monetary debt has had on all of us. We keep this as a dark little secret: 'This is how much interest I owe.'

When credit is cheaper to use and easier to arrange, people do use more of it.

Debt is so ingrained into our culture that most Americans can't even envision a car without a payment ... a house without a mortgage ... a student without a loan ... and credit without a card. We've been sold debt with such repetition and with such fervor that most folks can't conceive of what it would be like to have NO payments.

Modern man drives a mortgaged car over a bond-financed highway on credit-card gas.

I hope we will never again see such a depression. But I am troubled by the huge consumer installment debt which hangs over the people of the nation, including our own people.

As we drive down the freeways, we see the new cars, but not the massive new-car loans that enslave their drivers to the banks.