Balanced budget requirements seem more likely to produce accounting ingenuity than genuinely balanced budgets.

We might come closer to balancing the Budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule.

A penny saved is a penny earned.

Thrift is of great revenue.

If you’re worried about the deficit, pay attention to the fact that it’s almost all attributable to military spending and the totally dysfunctional health program.

When I first starting making money, when I first made my first six-digits, I was – my big thing was I went to put super unleaded in my truck for the first time.

I think that I know the value of a dollar.

It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.

When I was a kid, there were no credit cards. Instead, retailers offered layaway plans. My mom would go to a store, such as a furniture outlet, choose the sofa she wanted, and put it on layaway. That meant she put a little money down to hold the sofa, and every payday she’d pay a little toward the purchase.

It’s time to fundamentally change the way that we do business in Washington. To help build a new foundation for the 21st century, we need to reform our government so that it is more efficient, more transparent, and more creative. That will demand new thinking and a new sense of responsibility for every dollar that is spent.

If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher’s stone.

Riches are a good hand maiden, but a poor mistress.

I cap myself when I shop; I don’t like to spend extravagant amounts on clothes. But, I do get lent clothes for events, it’s scary to wear something so expensive, but I feel really pampered.

It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.

Well, I think that California has had a history of always spending more money than it takes in.

I believe – we all pay taxes. I’m happy to pay it, but I hate to have it abused, money wasted, no accountability. That’s going to bother you.

Rather go to bed without dinner than to rise in debt.

Money often costs too much.

It costs governments money to keep fuel prices low. Oil-rich Yemen, for instance, devotes 9 percent of its GDP to making sure its people don’t riot when oil prices rise.

I haven’t been as wild with my money as somebody like me might have been. I’ve been very safe, very conservative with investments. I don’t blow money. I don’t have a ton of houses. I know things can go away. I’ve already had that experience.

We need earmark reform, and when I’m President, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.

There are only three ways to meet the unpaid bills of a nation. The first is taxation. The second is repudiation. The third is inflation.

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.

Elections should be held on April 16th- the day after we pay our income taxes. That is one of the few things that might discourage politicians from being big spenders.

Give me five minutes with a person’s checkbook, and I will tell you where their heart is.

I’m not really conservative. I’m conservative on certain things. I believe in less government. I believe in fiscal responsibility and all those things that maybe Republicans used to believe in but don’t any more.

Frugality is founded on the principal that all riches have limits.

On ‚Mystic River,‘ I had to cut my salary and everyone else’s to get it made.

Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you feel the impact.

Money is like an arm or leg – use it or lose it.

Money has always been in politics. And I’m not sure you’d want money to be completely out of politics.

Clearly this is a tough economic time, and a lot of families are hurting. So when we talk to parents, we talk about small changes for kids and things that don’t cost extra money. Like adding water and eliminating sugary drinks and sodas. That’s going to save money right there. Or adding a few more vegetables.

I’m interested in movement, and I’m interested in money, and I’m interested in the movement of money.

In liberal logic, if life is unfair then the answer is to turn more tax money over to politicians, to spend in ways that will increase their chances of getting reelected.

Gain may be temporary and uncertain; but ever while you live, expense is constant and certain: and it is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel.

Something’s very wrong with a nation that would rather spend money on war than take care of its children.

Even if the government spends itself into bankruptcy and the economy still does not recover, Keynesians can always say that it would have worked if only the government had spent more.

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.

You know people talk about federal money as if it falls from heaven. You know we thank heaven for it, but it came out of people’s pockets – and I’ve driven all over Washington, D.C., I cannot find the money tree.

Living on $6 a day means you have a refrigerator, a TV, a cell phone, your children can go to school. That’s not possible on $1 a day.

We can’t get to the $4 trillion in savings that we need by just cutting the 12 percent of the budget that pays for things like medical research and education funding and food inspectors and the weather service. And we can’t just do it by making seniors pay more for Medicare.

Fuel prices are at the center of our lives. They affect our ability to travel, stay warm, and feed ourselves.

I know it’s going to be the private sector that leads this country out of the current economic times we’re in. You can spend your money better than the government can spend your money.

The problem is not that people are taxed too little, the problem is that government spends too much.

Prosperity cannot be restored by raids upon the public Treasury.

The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.

Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.

I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself.

The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending.

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

Look at our society. Everyone wants to be thin, but nobody wants to diet. Everyone wants to live long, but few will exercise. Everybody wants money, yet seldom will anyone budget or control their spending.

Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor.

Nobody was ever meant, To remember or invent, What he did with every cent.

Don’t forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

You can examine the whole 19th century from the point of view of who would have maxed out their credit cards. Emma Bovary would have maxed hers out. No question. Mr. Scrooge would not have. He would have snipped his up.

I always try to be smart. I try to treat all the money I’m making like it’s the last time I’m going to make it.

Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.

The time to save is now. When a dog gets a bone, he doesn’t go out and make a down payment on a bigger bone. He buries the one he’s got.

A penny saved is two pence clear.

When you look at how much we spend on social programs in our country, it separates us from a lot of countries. In our country, if you’re hungry, we’ll feed you. If you’re homeless, we’ll house you. If you’re too poor to be sick, we’ll pay for your doctor. But all of that comes at a cost.