Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 773, Dealing with Debt.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 773.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development.
In say it with me, beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Our website is eslpod.com.
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This episode is a dialogue about debt, when you owe other people money, when you borrow money.
That, of course, can sometimes lead to problems.
Let's get started.
Let's go shopping.
Wait a second.
What are all these?
They're bills, but they don't have to be paid yet.
Don't worry.
Let's go.
There's a new pair of shoes with my name on it.
Hold on a minute.
This is a notice saying that you're behind on your house payments and if you don't pay soon, your house will go into foreclosure.
Oh, they're just bluffing.
I'm only a little behind in my payments.
I'll get to it next week.
And this is a notice from your bank telling you that your car is being repossessed because you haven't made a car payment in three months.
Is that true?
I refuse to look at anything as boring as a bill today.
And these are from the power company and the phone company.
They're going to cut off your services if you don't pay now.
If I could just charge those payments, I'd be okay.
Not with these credit cards.
You're maxed out.
I'm surprised you haven't heard from collection agencies already.
Maybe I have.
They can hound me all they want, but I'm not that behind on my payments.
I'm tired of waiting.
I'm going shopping with or without you.
Our dialogue begins with Kristen saying to Ed, Let's go shopping.
Let's go buy some things.
Ed says, Wait, what are all these?
He's looking at something.
Kristen says, they're bills, but they don't have to be paid yet.
Bills, B-I-L-L-S, the singular is bill, are statements saying how much money you owe a company.
Usually, when you have some sort of service done, The company that is giving you the service or the product sends you a bill.
You can have a gas bill, an electric bill, a telephone bill.
You have to usually pay these every month.
Kristen says these bills that Ed is looking at don't have to be paid yet.
Don't worry, she says.
Let's go.
There's a new pair of shoes with my name on it.
The expression there's something with your name on it is used to describe something that you want to have very badly.
You have plans to buy it.
So, for example, if I was going to buy a new car...
I might say, oh, there's a Mazda Miata with my name on it.
Or there's a Ford pickup truck with my name on it, meaning those are things that I want to buy.
Of course, it doesn't actually have your name on it.
You're saying that that is something that you are going to get.
Ed says, hold on a minute.
This is a notice, this is a letter saying that you're behind on your house payments and if you don't pay soon, your house will go into foreclosure.
To be behind on something means to be late, not to be doing something as you had scheduled.
I'm behind on my accounting.
I was supposed to finish my accounts last week, and I'm still working on it.
I'm behind on my bills means the bills were supposed to be paid last month and I haven't paid them yet.
In this case, Kristen is behind on her house payments.
When you buy a house in the United States, usually you get a loan from the bank.
You borrow money from the bank.
They lend you money.
And then you have to, of course, pay the loan back every month.
That's what house payments are.
Ed says that the notice says that the house payments of Kristen are behind schedule and that her house may go into foreclosure.
Foreclosure F-O-R-E C-L-O-S-U-R-E is what happens when you don't pay your loan back to the bank.
If you take a long time and you don't give the bank their money, every month the bank can come and take your house from you because you haven't paid the loan back.
This unfortunately, has happened a lot here in the United States in the last few years.
Kristen says oh, they're just bluffing.
To bluff B-L-U-F-F means to say something, to say that you're going to do something bad, but you don't really mean it.
You're not serious.
You won't actually do that.
Sometimes we use the verb bluff when we're playing cards, a card game like poker.
You say that you have something, but you don't actually have anything.
You're bluffing.
You're lying, basically.
So to bluff can be to lie, or to bluff can be to threaten to do something bad, but not be serious about it, not actually intend to do it.
Kristen says, I'm only a little behind in my payments.
I'll get to it next week.
I'll get to it means I will take care of it.
I will handle it later.
Ed, who for some reason is looking through Kristen's mail I'm not sure why sees another letter, another piece of paper, that is, a notice from Kristen's bank that telling her that her car is being repossessed.
To repossess is similar to a foreclosure.
The bank comes and takes back what it gave you or what you borrowed money to buy.
The bank didn't give it to you, but the bank gave you the money to buy the house or buy the car.
Now for a house.
When the bank comes and says we're taking your house from you, that's called a foreclosure.
When it's anything else, like a car, or maybe you borrowed money to buy furniture or whatever it is, we call it repossession.
To possess means to own or to have something.
To repossess means to take something from someone else, usually someone who has borrowed money from you.
There was a movie many years ago called The Repo Man, R-E-P-O.
Repo stands for repossessed.
Usually we talk about this verb when dealing with someone's car, when they borrow money for a car and they don't pay their loan.
Ed says that Kristen's car is being repossessed because she hasn't made a car payment in three months.
Remember we talked about house payments, money you pay to the bank every month for the loan that you have.
That loan is called a mortgage when you buy a house.
Well, this is a car loan, and for car loans, you have car payments.
You pay the bank every month for the loan they gave you to buy your car.
Ed says, is that true?
Kristen says, I refuse to look at anything as boring as a bill today.
She thinks that her bills are not interesting.
They're boring.
So she's just not going to look at them.
Ed continues to go through Kristen's mail.
He says, these, these letters, are from the power company and the phone company.
The power company is the company you buy your electricity from.
Usually there's just one power company for a given area.
Sometimes the local government owns the power company, but in many places a private company has the contract to give everyone electricity.
A phone company is always, at least in the US, a private company that provides you with telephone service.
Ed says that the power company and the phone company are going to cut off Kristen's services if she doesn't pay her bills.
To cut off services.
Your services means to stop giving you what you were paying for or what you haven't paid for, in this case,
So to cut off your power, to cut off your phone service.
That's what will happen if you don't pay your bills.
Kristen says, if I could just charge those payments, I'd be okay.
To charge, C-H-A-R-G-E, means to use a credit card to pay a bill.
You don't have the cash, the money, so you use a credit card, a Visa or a MasterCard to pay the bill.
The word charge also has some other meanings in English.
Take a look at our learning guide for those.
Ed says that Kristen can't charge the bills.
He says, not with these credit cards.
They're maxed out.
To max M-A-X.
Out is a two-word phrasal verb meaning to use the most you possibly can of something.
Max is short for maximize.
It's related to the word maximum, the most of something.
Well, to max out your credit cards means to use all of your credit.
The bank usually gives you maybe 1000 or 2000 or 5000 that you can spend with your credit card, but then it says okay, no more.
Well, Kristen has maxed out her credit cards.
She can't use them anymore until she pays her bills.
Ed says, I'm surprised you haven't heard from collection agencies already.
A collection agency is a company that helps other companies get their money from customers who don't pay.
So if you have a cell phone and you don't pay your bill after a few months, another company, a collection agency, might call you and say hey, we want the money back.
Now they can't come and hurt you, but they can do other things that will hurt you financially if you don't pay your bill.
Kristen says maybe I have, meaning maybe I have heard from collection agencies.
She's saying that these agencies have probably already contacted her.
She says they can hound me all they want.
To hound H-O-U-N-D.
Someone means to bother someone, usually by asking for something over and over again.
His wife hounded him about cutting the lawn, about cutting the grass outside.
Or he hounded the employee to finish her work. to constantly be asking someone.
Well, here we're talking about collection agencies hounding you, calling you, and that's what collection agencies I think will do.
They keep calling you until you pay your bill.
Kristen says, I'm not that behind on my payments, meaning I'm not very behind.
I'm not that late.
I'm tired of waiting.
I'm going shopping with or without you.
So Kristen doesn't want to pay her loans or worry about all of these problems with her debt.
She's just going to go shopping.
Ed says, you're on your own, meaning you have to do this by yourself.
I am not going to go with you.
He says, I refuse to help you toward your financial ruin.
Ruin R-U-I-N is a very bad situation when you are completely destroyed, when the worst thing has happened to you.
Financial ruin is when you don't have any money anymore.
You don't have any way of getting money.
You have maxed out all your credit cards.
Your house is in foreclosure.
Your car has been repossessed.
We might call that financial ruin.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
Let's go shopping.
Wait a second.
What are all these?
They're bills, but they don't have to be paid yet.
Don't worry.
Let's go.
There's a new pair of shoes with my name on it.
Hold on a minute.
This is a notice saying that you're behind on your house payments and if you don't pay soon, your house will go into foreclosure.
Oh, they're just bluffing.
I'm only a little behind in my payments.
I'll get to it next week.
And this is a notice from your bank telling you that your car is being repossessed because you haven't made a car payment in three months.
Is that true?
I refuse to look at anything as boring as a bill today.
And these are from the power company and the phone company.
They're going to cut off your services if you don't pay now.
If I could just charge those payments, I'd be okay.
Not with these credit cards.
You're maxed out.
I'm surprised you haven't heard from collection agencies already.
Maybe I have.
They can help me all they want, but I'm not that behind on my payments.
I'm tired of waiting.
I'm going shopping with or without you.
You're on your own.
I refuse to help you toward your financial ruin.
I'm never on my own when it comes to our dialogues.
That's because the wonderful Dr. Lucy Say writes them for us.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2012 by the Center for Educational Development.
