Frances O'Grady Quotes

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.

I think that so many people don't understand how easy it is to be broke, how easy it is to find yourself in a situation where you're in an absolutely foreign place.

People who go broke in a big way never miss any meals. It is the poor jerk who is shy a half slug who must tighten his belt.

Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can't afford to drive, credit card bills you can't afford to pay, and tuition that's beyond your reach.

Footage of people camped out at Best Buy or elsewhere is not remotely a celebration. Rather, it's a reminder of just how economically distressed a large percentage of our populace is.

More than ever before, Americans are suffering from back problems: back taxes, back rent, back auto payments.

Every day, families in the United States face the stark choice between a roof over their heads and food on the table. Buying health insurance, owning a home, and saving up for college are just too far out of their reach.

Very few people can afford to be poor.

I had been working for eight years and all I had to show for it was this horrible debt. At one point we had the bailiff at the door.

I've gone for long stretches without working. I remember many times peeking into my checkbook to see if any money was left.

If you must know, my parents came from pretty hardscrabble backgrounds in the southern Midwest. I certainly didn't grow up poor, but I did spend my 20s and early 30s juggling temp jobs and choking on massive student-loan debt.

I was broke until I was 40. Really broke. I could get by, but I had nothing.

January, month of empty pockets! let us endure this evil month, anxious as a theatrical producer's forehead.

Debt has become a part of who we are… Normal is broke in America.

… there are a great many people who not only can make no budget but can barely manage to exist with their families on what they earn from day to day

I was broke from 19 to 26, borrowing money from my parents or my brothers or sisters every week to pay the bills.

We don't make enough in our job to live the way that we would want to and to have the support that we would need. Most of our income doesn't even come from our salary from our employer and we have to find income from other places.

Nobody likes being broke. As somebody who's had to live out of a 1982 Datsun, trust me. I know. I also understand that the first step to improve your situation is to fix the problem that landed you there in the first place.

I grew up in Communist China and never had much money to my name, and then, all of a sudden, I had giant student loans.

My family, like many families here in South Carolina, have faced difficult financial situations.

Simply put, unsustainable debt is helping to keep too many poor countries and poor people in poverty.

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.

When you ain’t got no money, you got the blues.

Lack of money means discomfort, means squalid worries, means shortage of tobacco, means ever-present consciousness of failure-above all, it means loneliness.

I know several women my age who are really poor...because they spent most of their energy taking care of children.