Credit cards are like snakes: Handle 'em long enough, and one will bite you.
Interpretation
Credit cards can lead to financial trouble if mismanaged.
This quote by Elizabeth Warren uses the metaphor of snakes to illustrate the dangers of credit cards. It suggests that while credit cards can be useful financial tools, improper handling or over-reliance on them can result in negative consequences, akin to getting bitten by a snake after handling it for too long.
In practice
When discussing responsible financial habits at a seminar.
Families rely on financial services more than ever, but those who need them most - who struggle to make ends meet - too often must contend with sky-high interest rates and tricks and traps buried in the fine print of their loan products.
There's been such a sense that there's one set of rules for trillion-dollar financial institutions and a different set for all the rest of us. It's so pervasive that it's not even hidden.
Mitt Romney is the guy who said corporations are people. No, Governor Romney, corporations are not people.
I talk to nurses and programmers, salespeople and firefighters - people who bust their tails every day. Not one of them - not one - stashes their money in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
'Middle class' used to be synonymous with secure, with steady, with boring, because middle-class people were people who were pretty much safe from the time they first started work on through retirement and until their deaths. No longer.
Does anyone believe that Goldman Sachs is gonna give up a deal that would yield millions of dollars because someone fussed at them behind closed doors?
Saving is a fine thing. Especially when your parents have done it for you.
It is vital for officials and regulators to have input from people within our businesses who understand the intricacies of how financial markets operate and the consequences of certain policy decisions.
People who want to know how stocks fared on any given day ask, "Where did the Dow close?" I'm more interested in how many stocks went up versus how many went down. These so-called advance/decline numbers paint a more realistic picture.
I am more and more impressed with the possibilities of history's repeating itself on many different counts. You don't get very far in Wall Street with the simple, convenient conclusion that a given level of prices is not too high.
I cannot invest the way I want the world to be; I have to invest the way the world is.
The foundation of a financial fresh start actually has nothing to do with money or specific financial dos and don'ts.
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