This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 541.
Turn a profit with these financial phrases.
Welcome to the Business English Podcast from All Ears English.
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This is real business english, with your favorite american hosts, lindsey and aubrey, coming to you from arizona and colorado, usa.
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Hello, Lindsay.
How are you?
Doing great today, Aubrey.
How are you?
How's everything?
Excellent.
A question for you.
Do you know anyone who works in finance?
I do, actually.
I know someone that works in a big investment bank in Downtown Manhattan.
Yeah.
The real thing right on the stock market.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
Amazing.
I know a few people who work in finance, but they all work from home now.
So that's probably a very different job.
What he's doing and what they're doing.
Yeah.
She was in real quickly after the pandemic because they can't trade the kind of trading she does.
I don't think they can do it from home.
Yeah, interesting.
And it's interesting that i assumed he.
I said i know, which is funny because two of the people i know who work in finance are also women.
Yeah, so i should have assumed she.
But i think when i imagine wall street manhattan finance guys like a very bro, bro culture right, he that finance bro, but not always, Not always.
We love to bust assumptions, right?
Yes, we do.
Well, we got a great question about phrases that we use at work in business English that are really about finances and the finance world.
So excited to dive into these today.
Yes.
I'm going to go ahead and read the question.
We're starting with this amazing question from our listener.
Our listener Julia says, Dear Lindsay, Michelle and Aubrey, I'm Julia.
Your podcast has helped me a lot and I'm truly grateful for everything you share.
Recently I've been diving into the world of investing and learned idioms like nest egg, lose one shirt, turn a profit and go belly up.
I'd love to know what other investing or money phrases native speakers use in everyday conversations.
I'm all ears.
See what you did there.
And can't wait to hear your take on this.
Best regards, Julia.
What a clever message and smart and just love our listeners.
We love our listeners.
Such a great question.
Honestly, the vocab she shared there, I want to dive into.
So we're going to make this a two part series.
So definitely follow for part two.
We're going to go over these today and a couple more.
And then part two with even more financial vocab we use at work.
Yes, for sure.
I mean, how much do you feel like you talk about investing with friends, Aubrey?
That's the first question.
Is this topic talked about a lot among friends and what parts of it are talked about?
Yeah, definitely.
It's interesting.
So this part one, we're talking more about financial profit.
Part two, we're talking about more like financial loss or ruin.
But these are idioms that we do use in other ways.
They're not just to talk about finances.
I don't talk a ton with friends or coworkers about investments or finances.
Every now and then, you know, with my partner or close family, maybe.
But this vocabulary comes up in other ways as well.
Yeah.
Like, for example, at work, right?
We're rooting this in the context of probably work conversations because we're on the Business English podcast.
And so often you might be talking about a competitor, a competing company that just had an acquisition or something happened.
This is where this is more likely to come up.
Not as much at work about your personal finances.
Exactly.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Good to know.
So again, like we said, make sure you hit follow to get both parts of the series.
So nest egg is a good one.
Yeah.
That's the first one we're going to dive into.
This is some kind of savings or a financial surplus that is set aside for the future or for a specific reason.
Yeah.
So for example, the founders use their personal nest egg to fund the startup's early stages.
That makes me think of Shark Tank a lot.
Totally.
You see the entrepreneurs up there on stage and They'll say we use our life savings, we use our nest egg to start this company.
And then you see the sharks do the face plant thing and you're like, oh, this isn't good.
I know, right?
When it's not a viable product, and you can just see them feeling terribly for someone who has spent their nest egg on something that's not going to work out.
It's the hardest moment on Shark Tank.
But we got to take risk, no risk, no reward in the world of business, right?
So sometimes it is the right move.
And there's been a lot of huge success stories off that show too.
Absolutely.
I was just using my scrub daddy, not an ad.
I don't know if you have one of those.
It's this little sponge with a smiley face that works so well.
Found out about it on Shark Tank.
Yep.
Perfect.
I've heard of that.
That's one of the biggest success stories for sure.
Exactly.
All right.
What would be another example?
So maybe after the acquisition, she set aside part of the payout as a nest egg for future ventures.
So yeah, this is just money you're saving, really.
An idiom we use has nothing to do with bird's nests or real eggs.
It just means money that's being saved.
All right, good.
And then turn a profit.
So this is definitely something you might hear at work.
This is when you start making money.
The key phrase here is start making money.
So it means before you weren't making money. right?
Exactly.
Yeah.
So for example, the company didn't turn a profit until it expanded into international markets.
Yeah.
So maybe you know, if you're still in the startup stage, you haven't necessarily found a business model and started making money yet, right?
People are just investing on this idea, right?
This means the same as become profitable, right?
You could say the company didn't become profitable until it expanded.
We use this phrase, turn a profit in the same way.
Yeah, and here's another example of this change, this shift, this moment.
Management expects the division to turn a profit by the end of the fiscal year.
Here you could be talking about your own company, right?
Exactly, right?
This is predictions that something will become profitable.
It will turn a profit.
Yeah.
What about rainy day fund?
I mean, sometimes this is used outside of work too, right?
Absolutely.
Both.
So this is just money saved for emergencies.
Companies will have rainy day funds.
People will have their own rainy day fund.
And yeah, this just means money that you're saving for the extreme case.
You're not going to use it for frivolous expenses.
Exactly.
So the CFO recommended creating a rainy day fund to prepare for market downturns.
Or during the supply chain disruption, the rainy day fund kept operations running.
So sometimes you'll hear someone talking about maybe saving money for like travel, and they'll call it a rainy day fund.
So sometimes we will use it in the context of, you know, more like fun spending, just kind of anything extra.
Right.
Personal life stuff.
Right.
Yes.
Right.
Yes.
So a lot of these can.
Yeah, exactly.
And same with cushion.
I mean, your family wants to have some financial cushion in case of something like COVID happened.
And I know a lot of companies needed to have a rainy day fund.
Families needed to have a cushion, right?
Exactly.
This is similar to a rainy day fund to call something a cushion.
This is extra money for safety or for maybe unpredicted expenses.
So, for example, strong cash reserves gave the firm a cushion during the economic slowdown.
Yeah, COVID is a really good example.
Most.
If companies didn't have a cushion, then it was hard to survive if you know their stores needed to close or business slowed down.
Supply chains were disrupted.
Yeah, I think people were surprised at how quickly the economy kind of came out of COVID in some ways.
In other ways, it hasn't, right?
But versus the 2008 downturn, I mean, that took years, right?
Yeah, that's true.
It's interesting.
Some people were able to sort of weather COVID and bounce back more quickly.
Yeah, two or three months in some cases.
But for the recession in 2008, I think the joblessness rate was still very low in 2011 and 12.
Right.
It's crazy.
Yeah.
Or another example, the extra funding provided a cushion for against unexpected cost increases.
Yes.
And then make a killing.
I love this one, right?
This is where you earn a lot quickly.
This is pretty informal, by the way.
So I don't think that an investor presenting a business model or an entrepreneur presenting a business model to investors in the boardroom are going to say we're going to make a killing in Q2.
It's just a little too formal, informal for that.
Informal, right.
But we do see this in reports of company success.
For example, you might see in an article, Early investors made a killing when the company went public and that means they earned a lot of money on it.
Yeah, the difference is the context.
Are you asking for money to fund your company?
You should be taking things very seriously in that moment versus, you know, commentary and journalism.
Right.
Right.
You probably wouldn't hear this on Shark Tank, for example.
I probably would have been like, I think we can make a killing.
Probably not because it is very informal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or the firm made a killing selling its software to enterprise clients.
And this is often lined up with timing of trends.
You know, like if you were in the dot com boom, you probably made a killing.
I don't know, building websites or whatever people were doing at that time.
Right.
Yes.
A lot of companies made a killing just by doing the right thing at the right time.
Yes.
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All right, Aubrey, role play time.
So here I'm a CEO of a retail clothing store.
And I'm talking to you, Aubrey, you're the CFO of the company.
So you know the numbers.
Exactly.
Yes.
Numbers don't lie.
I could never be a CFO in real life.
I am not that good with numbers.
Numbers don't lie.
Yeah, me neither, really.
All right, we need to talk about cash flow.
Are we turning a profit this quarter?
Yes.
Online sales got a boost last month and margins are improving.
Good.
Sounds like we won't have to dip into our rainy day fund then.
Yeah.
Our cash reserves give us a decent cushion if sales slow down.
That's great news.
We may not be making a killing, but we're doing well.
Nice.
So, yeah, this is interesting.
It clearly implies that you and I have a very close working relationship, where our conversations are more informal.
This is not like a meeting with a board of directors, or you wouldn't use that phrase making a killing.
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
Um, and this is a good conversation you want to be having with your CFO, right?
And so I asked you, are we turning a profit this quarter?
Right.
Meaning are we starting to make money?
Maybe we hadn't been making money before.
Exactly.
Or maybe there's an ebb and flow.
Sometimes a company will make a profit and then they'll have a few quarters where they're in the red and there isn't a profit.
And so we're asking, what about next quarter?
Are we going to turn a profit this quarter?
Exactly.
And then what did I say after that?
Yeah.
And then we're talking about how online sales got a boost.
So you said, great.
Sounds like we won't have to dip into our rainy day fund.
So dip into is an interesting phrasal verb that really means take out of.
To dip into a fund means you're going to have to extract some of that money.
And then you said, yeah, our cash reserves gave us a decent cushion if sales slowed down.
So we have extra money in the bank account in case we need it.
In case of emergency, in case of extreme need, we have this cushion we could use.
Yes.
And then you said we may not be making a killing, but we're doing well.
So right, you're profitable.
This company is doing well, but they're not like gangbusters.
They're not making a killing.
Yeah, they're not crushing it.
Got it.
Perfect.
All right.
Good stuff.
Good question from Julia.
Guys, we love your questions.
Send them in to support at allersenglishcom and we'll make sure your question gets to our team so we can answer it for you right on the show.
Okay.
Yes.
And be sure to hit follow for part two.
These phrases were more about financial profit.
And there are a lot of interesting phrases we use for financial loss.
So be sure to hit follow for those.
Yeah.
And for a takeaway.
I mean, I think it's really interesting how many of these phrases do work at home as well, in your social life.
But it is important to know what topics are okay to bring up.
In what context?
Especially around money because it's one of the four sort of taboo topics, right?
Yes, absolutely.
That's one of the trickiest things about business English is knowing what's too informal to use in those more formal business conversations and what's too formal to use when you're having those more casual conversations and you don't want to create this wall of formality.
For sure, guys.
So keep listening here on the show.
Again, hit that follow button and we'll let you know when phrases are formal, when they're informal and where to use them.
All right.
Absolutely.
All right.
Great.
Aubrey, we'll talk to you soon.
Have a good day.
Awesome.
See you next time.
Bye.
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