Budgeting Quotes

“My parents started with very little and were the only ones in their families to graduate from college. As parents, they focused on education, but did not stop at academics - they made sure that we knew music, saw art and theatre and traveled - even though it meant budgeting like crazy.”

“All workers, whether they are employed in the private or public sector, should avoid living 'paycheck to paycheck.' Studies show that every household wastes 10% or more of its salary or income on unnecessary expenditures or by not taking the time to shop for better prices. It's all a matter of proper budgeting.”

“It is critical that kids start to learn the value of money, short-term and long-term saving and budgeting at an early age.”

“Completing annual appropriations bills would be an important step in responsible federal budgeting.”

“Smart financial planning - such as budgeting, saving for emergencies, and preparing for retirement - can help households enjoy better lives while weathering financial shocks. Financial education can play a key role in getting to these outcomes.”

“What you don't do, if you're an adult, is decide that you're going to budget things through a sequester. What does that word have to do with budgeting? It's like if you have a family budget and go, 'We really don't know what to take out economically from the budget, so we're going to whack out protein for this week.'”

“A penny saved is worth two pennies earned . . . after taxes.”

“The financial report makes it very clear that if we got into honest budgeting today, that in fact we would find ourselves with a much larger deficit than we have today.”

“One truism of federal budgeting is that growing deficits force difficult spending decisions, and when they do, programs to help the poor are usually first on the chopping block.”

“A Debt Problem Is, At Its Core, a Budgeting Problem.”

“Cultivate your curiosity. Keep it sharp and always working. Consider curiosity your life preserver, your willingness to try something new. Second, enlarge your enthusiasm to include the pursuit to excellence, following every task through to completion. Third, make the law of averages work for you. By budgeting your time more carefully than most people you can make more time available. Does the combination of curiosity, enthusiasm, and the law of averages guarantee success Indeed it does not ... Success in the final analysis always involves luck or the element of chance. Louis Pasteur grasped this well when he said that chance favors the prepared mind.”

“A budget tells us what we can't afford, but it doesn't keep us from buying it.”

“I think we have to notice that the business processes we use right now for thinking and planning and budgeting and strategy are all delivered on very tight agendas.”

“I've been a conservative when it comes to budgeting issues and streamlining government.”

“We must consult our means rather than our wishes.”

“These are tough times for state governments. Huge deficits loom almost everywhere, from California to New York, from New Jersey to Texas.Wait—Texas? Wasn't Texas supposed to be thriving even as the rest of America suffered? Didn't its governor declare, during his re-election campaign, that 'we have billions in surplus'? Yes, it was, and yes, he did. But reality has now intruded, in the form of a deficit expected to run as high as $25 billion over the next two years.And that reality has implications for the nation as a whole. For Texas is where the modern conservative theory of budgeting—the belief that you should never raise taxes under any circumstances, that you can always balance the budget by cutting wasteful spending—has been implemented most completely. If the theory can't make it there, it can't make it anywhere.”

“You'll notice that for many progressives, taking from the rich is not simply a necessity of budgeting but a moral imperative and a tool to institute fairness that capitalism supposedly hasn't.”

“Before Mint.com, I was a long-time user of 'Microsoft Money' and Intuit's 'Quicken.' Both were powerful tools, loaded with features and functionality around taxes, investment, budgeting - too feature-laden, in fact. They took hours to set up, forever to learn, and an hour a week to maintain.”

“Don't tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value.”

“I remember I had to go and ask my mom for groceries sometimes because I wasn't the best person with budgeting. I had to learn the hard way, but you live and learn. It builds character and strength.”