Frank Rich Quotes

Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don't have for something they don't need.

Too many people spend money they haven't earned to buy things they don't want to impress people they don't like.

We spend our way to the poorhouse. We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don't need, refinance them for more spending money, and declare bankruptcy, often leaving them full of garbage in our wake. Thrift is inimical to our being.

I had more clothes than I had closets, more cars than garage space, but no money.

In January we start saving money, getting out of credit card debt, funding our retirement accounts, and we're doing wonderful. Then, every single year like clockwork, starting in November, all of you fall into this trap that says, 'I have to buy this gift... I can't show up at this party and not have something for everybody.'

I used to buy nice clothes and drive a nice car when I couldn't afford it. But I spent all my money doing it, and now I don't have to. I like nice things. I like to travel in a certain style. I like to live in a nice place.

I was stupid when I started: the epitome of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. It was like, 'I get to live in L.A. and drive around in limos? Really?' I didn't realize I was owned. The more money gets pumped into you, the more you become a marionette. It made me a true redneck in attitude: I never wanted to wake up ever again feeling owned.

After 'X Factor,' I got loads of gigs. Then I went on holiday just after the tour and bought my Rolex in Tenerife. I needed to go through that phase - splurge and see that it's worthless - to get it out of my system.

There is an attitude that we should be able to have everything. No, you shouldn't be able to have anything. I'd like a helicopter, but I can't afford a helicopter, so I don't buy one. People are buying stuff they can't afford on credit. I bought my Ford hybrid with cash.

I got a wife who likes expensive things, so she takes all the cash.

When you first get money, you buy all these things so no one thinks you're mean, and you spread it around. You get a chauffeur and you find yourself thrown around the back of this car and you think, I was happier when I had my own little car! I could drive myself!

Hollywood is so fake and people need to realize that people are just people, and you, too, don't need to be born into something or have money or have whatever product someone is hawking on you.

Wal-Mart doesn't really care about your faith. Wal-Mart cares if you have money to spend, and it is going to be as generic as possible in exploiting the holiday season for every buck it can make.

We spend money we don't have, on things we don't need, to make impressions that don't matter.

I live by 'Earnin' and burnin'.' Meaning, I like to make money and spend it before I even have it. That's the way I live my life.

I waste a lot of money buying the same pair of shoes.

I've never been clever with money. I will buy anything at the top of the market.

I'd say the main way people get into terrible financial trouble is just to spend too much money relative to their income, and that is an endemic problem in the United States of America, and that's the kind of thing that should be taught about in schools.

The folly of endless consumerism sends us on a wild goose-chase for happiness through materialism.

I bought a lot of rubbish things that kids buy: skateboards and clothes and typical teenage stuff. And, as soon as I could, I wasted a lot of money on cars - BMW's mostly - for myself and my family.

I just love to shop. If I could, I would shop every single day in every single store and spend all of my money which, you know, I do anyway.

Many a family, in order to make a 'proper showing,' will commit itself for a larger and more expensive house than is needed, in an expensive neighborhood. Almost everyone would, it seems, like to keep up with the Joneses.

I've always listened to a lot of rap. It's all, 'Look at this car that cost me so much money, look at this Champagne.' It's super fun.

Television's escapist programming naturally continues to endorse living beyond one's means as the time-tested American Way and rarely depicts families or individuals wracked by the pressures and miseries that come with excess.

We have grown used to money. The handling, the increase of it, is the chief business of life now with most of us.