My roots were pretty far removed from high income. It's interesting to be back there at the level of income I have now, at this stage in my life.
I come from a background where money has never been an issue.
I just love cars; I've been like that since I was a kid. It's an infatuation because we grew up poor. Cars was something we were always trying to get.
I came from a middle class family hence I had to struggle hard for success.
It's nice, being brought up with no money at all. It's just not how I measure success, so that makes it a bunch easier.
You know some of the people in The Strokes, yeah, their parents had success - but we didn't live like yuppies.
Bin Laden comes out of a business background - he studied public administration and economics at university, and he worked for his family company, which was obviously a rather successful enterprise.
I come from a very working-class background.
I am certain that my family - my grandmother, mother and myself - had a credit score of zero when we arrived in 1976. There were no credit cards in the Soviet Union, and we didn't have any money.
I could, I think, quite easily have gone to Oxford. I got four good A levels, but my father's income was such that I wouldn't have got a grant, and he wouldn't let me go to university, and that was the end of it.
I often think what it was like not to have much money. I don't think it's good for people to be born into money and not know what it is never to have it.
I went to Marymount College in New York City with a lot of kids whose parents paid their way, and I wouldn't even have thought of asking my parents - they couldn't afford it, not with six kids!
I myself am from a very poor background; I experienced firsthand poverty in this country, and that is not unrelated to my desire, from the moment I became president, to make a priority of poverty reduction in this country.
We didn't grow up rich people.
I think the country will get behind someone who comes from a working-class background, who truly epitomizes the American Dream.
My kids never had the advantage I had: I was born poor.
If I was born into a household with anxiety about money, I wouldn't have had as much freedom to be in my own world. So it's impossible for me to divorce the privilege of my childhood from the other things.
I have a slightly bourgeois upbringing, I guess. My parents paid for me to go to school, which is nice, but I haven't gotten a dime since then. I have no trust fund. I wish I did.
I had a degree in economics but also thought of myself as a musician.
We didn't grow up superwealthy.
My dad is extremely successful, so I've seen the money and luxury growing up. I'm nowhere close to his stature.
I'm a working-class person, working with class.
My brother Carl became a physicist; I became an economist.
I don't come from a lot of money.
I've never known a lot of rich people. It's not my bag.
