This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 2020.
How to bond over budgeting in English.
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There are some topics that everyone thinks about differently.
One of them is budgeting.
How can you bring up this topic in English for a robust conversation?
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Hello Aubrey.
How's it going?
Happy Friday.
We are recording today on a Friday, which is awesome.
Yes.
Happy Friday.
Are you excited for the weekend?
I am excited.
I don't know when this is coming out, but anyways, there's always a Friday coming around the corner at some point for everyone.
Okay.
I have a question for you.
I'm wondering, are you good at budgeting?
Ooh, I don't really, not really.
I'm not, I don't have an accounting mind.
I just kind of look at what's left in my account and act accordingly.
I don't really know.
What about a follow-up question?
When you have a big trip coming up, do you sort of budget better, kind of save money, because you know you have an expensive trip coming up or not?
Um, sometimes it's more about the trip itself.
I try to do things on the trip to kind of save money right.
I like to do a blend, like one day we'll try to do a nice hotel, other day a cheap airbnb, another day maybe a hostel or kind of sometimes.
So mix it up so it's not 100 luxury, it's not 100 backpacking, it's somewhere in between.
So the trip ends up being hopefully more affordable.
Yes, absolutely.
So it's a little more sort of a holistic approach to it, right?
Where it's not like.
You have a spreadsheet and you're like this is the amount of money we have and we can't go over that, but it's a little more generally trying to save.
Yeah.
My in-laws, so another couple, they do that.
And my partner and I think about that.
We're like, we'll never be those people.
We just won't.
We're just not organized enough.
It's not our personality.
Yeah, you don't do it either.
Yeah.
No, and this is going to be a really interesting conversation today, because I recently discovered something that I did not know.
And here I am, 45 years old almost.
And you sort of start thinking you have sort of a good idea of a lot of places in the world.
And then every now and then, something happens that you're just like oh, there's a lot I still don't know.
Interesting.
And this has to do with budgeting and other cultures.
I do too.
Yeah, it's good to always be learning new things, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I love it.
OK, so what did you learn now?
We're ready.
Yes, let's dive in.
OK, so I taught a course, a class recently to a student and she asked not to be named.
So anonymous student.
But she was mentioning that in the culture that she grew up in, the concept of budgeting like it is in the in the culture in the US is very different, almost non-existent.
For her growing up, it was something that's just for governments to create a budget that they stay in.
And now that she's here in the US, she sees that families will have a budget.
Individuals will have a budget.
And this is very foreign to her, but she really appreciated it.
She was like, I can see why this is so good for kids to learn about budgeting at a young age.
And I asked lots of follow-up questions because this was a very new idea to me.
And she was sort of saying that in her culture basically all money goes to food and anything extra is saved to pass on to the next generation.
And I said, what about travel?
She sort of said travel is a luxury expense.
It's actually very rare.
And then she just said, you know, children, families, they don't really budget.
This concept doesn't even really exist and was surprising to her when she came to the US, And I found that so fascinating.
That is super fascinating.
This opens up a whole host of topics here that we could go into, Aubrey, right?
Another day, inheritance and how Americans look at inheritance.
I think increasingly our society is kind of frowning on inheritance tax savings, that kind of thing, right.
Passing money down.
And we're also-
It's very fraught, right?
This is a conversation that is fraught, meaning lots of people have varying opinions.
People aren't always going to agree.
And it can be, because if you think about someone whose parents have a lot of wealth, if they're not planning on passing that on to their children, there could be a lot of emotions involved.
Oh, my gosh.
And there's a whole range of opinions on that.
And that's one topic we could go into another day.
And then another topic that comes to mind is we're on the cusp of the debt ceiling in the American government right now.
They are working on a negotiation to increase the debt ceiling.
If they don't, there's going to be A massive problem.
By the time this comes out, we'll know whether or not they did.
I'm going to trust that they will.
But I'm nervous.
I've been following.
I'm not freaking out, but I'm I've been checking the headlines like, are they closer?
Because now they have to bring it to Congress for a vote.
So anyways, debt affects all of us in different ways between government and families and just life.
Yeah, absolutely.
Right.
And we've all known someone who is either not good at budgeting or just sort of is more comfortable with debt, who ends up with maybe a lot of credit card debt and becomes in a situation that is difficult to get out of.
That is problematic.
And and so, whether you're budgeting or not, which we're going to talk about, you know what is that budgeting?
We're going to share a lot of interesting vocabulary here.
It can be it can be scary.
You know, there's the potential to get in a lot of debt, like our country has, either as an individual or as a country.
Oh, my gosh.
This is one thing I really wish our country would implement better education at a very young age around good debt and bad debt.
Because there is good debt, that you can leverage that debt and actually, you know, put it to good use.
And then there's credit card debt, which can be crippling.
And I think kids come out of high school, even college, and have no idea about these things.
It's crazy.
Yes.
And I've known people who, you know, they like they'll get a mortgage with like a not fixed APR.
Yes.
Yeah.
Right.
That becomes very variable rate.
Yeah.
Yes.
Right.
A variable rate.
And it becomes burdensome at some point when it changes and then they're struggling.
And most of it's just lack of education.
They didn't realize what they were signing up for.
Well, that's how the entire global financial collapse happened in 2008 due to those balloon mortgages, right.
People signed up for mortgages.
They were kind of hunted down.
It was a predatory lending situation where people were saying, anyone can buy a house.
You can buy a house.
No money down.
But they didn't necessarily know that the rate was going to go up as soon as interest rates went up.
And then it just created a huge global collapse.
If you want to watch a really interesting film that went into exactly how that happened, watch The Big Short.
Did you watch that, Lindsay?
Oh, I've never seen that one.
Interesting.
It's about that exactly.
And it really covers it.
I mean it is a dramatization, but covering very closely how that happened, who was creating those loans and who was buying them and then who was packaging them to sell at high risk and what it did to the economy and who got rich from it that shouldn't have, and very fascinating.
It's also interesting to see all the other players that were involved.
You said you know who got rich who.
Oh, there's a documentary on Netflix right now about Bernie Madoff.
And that also went down.
He ended up being convicted right around the time.
Of course, his whole pyramid scheme collapsed exactly when the global economy collapsed, naturally.
So you see all there, all these stories, and hopefully we can learn from history.
So interesting.
Okay, so we want to share a couple of related episodes.
And then we're going to go into some vocabulary about budgeting.
And we definitely want to know what's this like in your culture?
Is it more similar to our student who was like that doesn't really exist, except for governments.
In my culture,
Or is it more like the US or somewhere in between?
So come back to YouTube, leave a comment on the YouTube video.
We would love to hear what it's like for you in your country.
Yeah, I love that idea.
And before we get further into this episode Aubrey, we should remind our listeners to hit follow on the All Ears English podcast.
Why should they do that?
Yes, guys, four episodes every week.
And they're always full of great vocabulary, interesting cultural discussions like this one.
You don't want to miss any of these episodes.
So be sure to hit follow wherever you find your podcasts to All Ears English.
I love it.
All right.
So what's next, Aubrey?
Where are we going from here?
All right.
I just want to share a couple of related episodes.
If you missed it, we interviewed a Fortune 50 business consultant, Melanie Parrish, and she's a budgeting expert.
So you can go on our blog, search her name, look for the old podcast.
Like that was really interesting.
And also over on the IELTS Energy podcast, we had a really great episode with vocabulary related to this.
It was episode 826.
It was called Avoid Being a Cheapskate. with this band nine vocabulary.
But it's not just vocabulary for IELTS.
Any conversation you're having about money or trying to save money.
You could really use this interesting vocabulary.
So make sure you're also following the IELTS Energy podcast.
Yeah, you and Jessica are over there twice a week talking about how to pass IELTS but also, like you said, how to get amazing vocabulary into your everyday conversations.
Yeah.
Yes, exactly.
Absolutely.
Okay, let's give our listeners some real tangible vocabulary to come away with today.
Where are we going to start today?
So let's just start with the noun budget, which also is a verb.
We'll get to that in a second.
But as a noun, it means an estimate of income and expenses or expenditure for a set period of time.
Yeah.
So for example, how do we use this in conversation?
What's your budget?
Very common.
Right.
Yeah.
It means how much money are you planning to spend?
How much money do you have to spend on this?
You'll hear this a lot when people want to maybe remodel or buy a car.
The salesperson might say, what's your budget?
Meaning how much money do you have to spend?
Right.
And you'll also say this being said between companies B2B in a sales situation.
You know, what's your advertising budget in Q3?
Right.
That's how you know what products to present to someone.
Right.
Right.
Exactly.
Or as a person, you might say, I'm not good at staying within a budget.
And what that means is if you decide, you know, I have $500 to spend on groceries in the month.
If you are spending a thousand every month, you're not staying within the budget, meaning you're not staying within the set amount of money that you had decided to spend.
Okay.
And now in the next one, we're taking budget and making it a verb.
Is that right?
Yes, exactly.
So either budget to budget as a verb or budgeting, right, as a present continuous verb.
And this means to allow or provide a particular amount of money in a budget.
Right.
OK.
Yeah.
So I could ask you again, are you good at budgeting?
Right.
Yeah.
And that's where you're using this present continuous verb.
It's not about staying in the noun budget.
It's the verb.
Are you good at doing that?
Oh, I love it when our listeners are able to take one word and use it in so many different ways.
Right.
That is a sign of high level fluency, don't you think?
Yes, absolutely.
Right.
And this one, it will come up if this is an interesting thing to ask people about.
We don't really talk about money all that much but as, Like the conversation I had with my student, it is an interesting thing to talk about as far as a culture or a country right
So you might not ask someone specifically, what's your budget?
Can you stay in a budget?
But you might ask them, what's this like in your culture?
Do people set a budget?
Interesting.
Yeah, I could see that as the most approachable way to go into this topic broadly societal, like how do people in your culture budget?
And even talking about your personal abilities, right?
But what we want to avoid, at least in American culture, is saying, how much money do you have?
Exactly.
Unless we're a salesperson who's ready to be direct, we're probably not going to say what's your budget.
Yeah.
We don't say, we don't talk about how much we, and this might not be true everywhere, right?
It might not be true.
We don't really talk about how much money we have in our bank accounts.
It's definitely a faux pas in conversation.
Okay, that's really important to say.
Absolutely.
And then there's this phrasal verb of, budget in, which means to fit into a budget, right?
So if, for example, you're going on a vacation to somewhere and you want to say can we budget in a vacation to Bali?
It means like, can we fit that expensive trip into the budget we have set?
Oh my gosh, I would love to go to Bali.
I know I've never been, but I've always wanted to go.
Maybe we can find it in the budget dollars, English.
Let's see.
Here's hoping.
That's a little bit of a pie in the sky idea, but I like it.
Aim high.
Yeah, for sure.
All right.
What would be the next one?
Okay.
So it's discretionary income.
And this is where I was talking with my student about.
You know what do you do with your discretionary income?
And this is extra income after expenses are met and in their culture they save it for the next generation.
Other people spend it on travel or cars or, you know, toys, boats, whatever.
Yeah.
That's fascinating.
You know how cultures look at spending, how cultures look at what's really important when you have that extra amount of money and Like what is a life well lived by different cultural perspectives.
Is it having this money to pass on?
Is it having travel experiences?
Is it having tons of homes?
Right.
That's fascinating how it's so different depending on the family you're raised in and the culture you live in.
And yeah, there's no right or wrong, just different.
For sure.
For sure.
So I don't have a lot of discretionary income these days.
And then what?
That's funny.
It didn't sound like a sample sentence.
It sounded like you were talking about yourself.
Oh.
That was an example sentence.
We don't know if that's true or not about Lindsay, guys.
That's hilarious.
I'm just so natural in my examples, Aubrey.
I'm just so natural.
Yes, that's something you could say like oh, I don't have a lot of discretionary income, which means don't have a lot of extra funds these days, right.
Most of what I'm making is going toward our basic necessities.
Or you might say, what is your favorite thing to do with discretionary income?
And then you're asking people, what are your hobbies?
What do you like to do for fun?
Yeah, and i think it's worth noting as well uh, that this term, discretionary spending, is also being used right now in the budget negotiations for the debt ceiling.
So for our listeners who are interested in government i'm sure some of you guys are or economics, that is also that's on the table right now as a negotiating piece.
Right, and what they call discretionary spending is military spending.
It's kind of things that the government chooses to spend money on.
There right now they're debating around should they add work requirements or more work requirements when people get um, get food stamps or get government support.
So these are discretionary pieces that the government decides to spend money on.
It's one of the negotiating pieces.
That's interesting.
Yeah, so interesting.
A lot to read about in the news, a lot to think about and great things to start up conversations about.
They're all really interesting things to think about.
For sure.
And then luxury expense.
I like this, right?
Something that's purchased with, again, there's that word discretionary income.
So high level, right?
Sorry, I was gonna say this is a noun phrase where, like this is what you buy with that discretionary income.
Yes.
Yeah, I was just gonna note that that word discretionary could be super high level in IELTS, don't you think?
Would that give us a seven, eight, something like that?
No, that's a band nine word for sure.
I don't think I've ever heard a student say it.
And this is what's interesting is the way examiners determine how high of a level a word is is how often they hear students say it.
Because even longer words that sound impressive.
If every student says it all the time, it's still band six, right?
But discretionary income, I don't know if I've ever heard a student say that.
So that's band nine.
Interesting.
Unless, of course, all of our listeners go and take IELTS this weekend in that case.
Even then, even then, right?
You're not all taking it at the same testing center, so you're still safe.
That's true.
I love it.
I love it.
So let's see, what else?
For luxury expense, do we do all the examples here?
No, not yet.
So you might say, like my student did, she said travel is a luxury expense.
So it's very rare that people buy that.
They would save money instead.
Yes.
Or...
I've always wanted a diamond bracelet, but it is quite the luxury expense.
It's quite.
And I'm putting real emphasis on quite.
Yes.
Right.
You're emphasizing how expensive that is and why you probably haven't you haven't bought it yet.
I've always wanted one, but it's quite the luxury expense.
So I don't know if that's ever going to happen.
Yeah, that's true.
And do we have a quick role play?
It looks like we're running out of time for today.
Yeah, let's do a role play.
Jump to the role play.
All right.
So in this role play, we are meeting about the budget for a conference we are planning.
I'll start us out.
Okay.
Okay, so now that we have the budget, we can figure out what we need to cut from the ideas we brainstormed last week.
Yeah, I think the open bar is a luxury expense that isn't going to fly.
I'd foot the bill for that myself, but I don't have that kind of discretionary income.
I do think we can budget in two drink tickets per person.
What do you think?
Great idea.
Let's plan on that.
All right.
Very nice.
Yes.
There's nothing like, you know, having a certain amount of money, and then that makes decisions very clear.
Exactly.
You do have a certain amount of money.
You got to stay within it.
Exactly.
So first I said, now that we have the budget, using it as a noun, that first way we taught it right.
We have the set amount of money we're allowed to spend on this.
And then I said, yeah, I think the open bar is a luxury expense that isn't going to fly.
Really good bonus.
We might have that in the app highlighted as a bonus word.
It's not going to work.
It will not be approved.
Yeah, I love that.
I can't fit it into the budget.
Won't fly.
I love it.
Such a natural expression.
So good.
And then another fun idiom I said I'd put the bill for that myself, meaning I would provide the funds.
I would pay for that myself, but I don't have that kind of discretionary income.
Open bar I don't want to pay for an open bar.
That could be very expensive.
It could be very expensive, especially for a really big um event.
Oh, my gosh for sure I love how our listeners are getting some good idioms today, as well as this vocab.
It's really good.
And then again I used it as a verb in the last piece.
Right, I do think we can budget in two drinks per person.
Yeah yeah budget, exactly Yeah.
Interesting.
This guy's learning about how different cultures feel about and discuss budgeting really opens your perspective.
That's what it did for me.
It really opened my worldview.
I think I can be a little American centric sometimes.
Right.
Where I sort of assume something like budgeting is the same everywhere, as it is for me, as it is here.
And I need to remember I think it's so great to have people in my life students, you guys out there that can help me see that thing.
You know, a lot of even something like this is different all over the world.
Oh, my gosh, it's true.
It's true.
We have to know that.
We have to know that our way is just one way of thinking about a life well lived, or success, or what should be done with money.
There are so many ways to think about it.
Thanks for bringing this topic today, Aubrey.
Really good.
Thank you.
I loved it.
Thanks for chatting with me.
So fun.
All right, guys hit.
Follow on the podcast right now if you love our style, which is a focus on connection, not perfection.
All right.
I'll talk to you very soon.
Take care, Aubrey.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
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