Welcome back to the Breakout Business English podcast.
My name is Chris.
I am a business English and communication coach and I've personally worked with well over 1000 international professionals likely just like you, to improve the way that they communicate at work in English.
Thank you so much as always for listening and for your time.
I know how valuable it is.
And our topic today is money.
I kind of feel like I should have had this as a dedicated topic at some point in the past, given that this is a show about business English and communicating at work, but it's taken me 65 episodes to get there.
Hopefully, you'll find the content of today's episode worth the wait.
I find the topic of money really interesting, specifically how people's willingness to talk about money changes between countries and generations.
I think that younger people are a lot more willing to tell each other exactly how much they earn, for instance, whereas for older generations it's sometimes seen as rude to tell someone your salary.
I'd love to hear your opinions on this.
Do you think that being open with your friends and colleagues about how much you earn and what your expenses are is a good thing?
And is it common in your culture to discuss your income and expenses, your outgoings, in this way?
Today, however, we're going to talk about something that I think everyone likes.
And that is how to spend your employer's money.
How to spend your boss's money.
We'll divide our podcast today into two halves.
First, we're going to talk about larger amounts of money, usually spent on whole departments, or maybe to pay for things that the whole company will benefit from.
Then in the second half, we'll focus on how individuals can talk about the money that the company provides them with.
This might be for when you're on a business trip, for instance.
And of course we'll hear some great natural and native sounding vocabulary and grammar structures along the way.
And I'll let you know how you can book some of my time if you really want to get serious about improving your English.
So let's start by hearing some natural and native sounding examples of some larger amounts of money being spent.
We've allocated a significant portion of the budget to marketing this year.
We've allocated a significant portion of the budget to marketing this year.
We need to budget for a few more staff if we're going to start hiring again.
We need to budget for a few more staff if we're going to start hiring again.
The company is trying to reduce its overheads by allowing more people to work from home.
The company is trying to reduce its overheads by allowing more people to work from home.
Okay, let's start with the word budget.
That's B U D G E T.
This is probably the first word that a lot of people think of when discussing spending money at work.
The important thing that I want to discuss here is the fact that budget can either be a noun or a verb, depending on the sentence structure.
Let's start with the first example.
In the first example we heard, we have allocated a significant portion of the budget to marketing this year.
We've allocated a significant portion of the budget to marketing this year.
So here you heard that we used the definite article.
That's the with the word budget, which makes it a noun, of course.
A budget is simply a plan for your money.
It tells you how much you are allowed to spend over a certain period of time, usually a month or a year.
That one is often called an annual budget.
The word actually comes from an old French word for leather bag or a purse which, of course, we use today.
If you're a gentleman, then you probably carry a wallet, and the lady is more likely to carry a purse.
And if we go even further back, we can find this root in ancient Latin for Again, a leather bag, bulga in ancient Latin.
And we'll see that later today as well.
So you can think of a budget as a bag of money that the company has available for a specific purpose.
In maybe a B2 level conversation, you will often hear three verbs used with the noun budget.
First, you set a budget.
To set a budget is to make that plan and decide how much money to spend on something.
Next, you try to stick to a budget.
So, to stick to a budget is slightly informal, but still definitely professional.
And it means to successfully spend less money than your budget.
And finally, if things go wrong and you spend more money than you intended, we can use the phrasal verb to go over budget.
As in, we don't want to go over budget.
Or in the past tense, we went over budget last year.
We went over budget last year.
So if you are a manager, maybe saying it's not in the budget is a very professional way to say no when someone asks to buy something expensive.
Now, let's look at another word and this is overheads.
Overheads, usually used in the plural there with the S on the end, overheads.
In the third example we heard the company is trying to reduce its overheads by allowing more people to work from home.
The company is trying to reduce its overheads.
So overheads, or sometimes just overheads, refers to the regular costs of running a business that are not linked to making a specific product.
That's really important.
Costs not linked to making your product.
So if you run an ice cream shop, for instance, the more ice cream you sell, the more you need to spend on milk.
These things are directly connected.
When one goes up, the other goes up too.
You can't make more ice cream without buying more milk first.
However, if you've got three really big freezers in your shop, then it doesn't matter how much ice cream you make or sell.
It's still going to cost the same amount of money to run those freezers, to operate that equipment.
The same applies to your rent, your insurance and, to a large extent, your staff costs, and a lot more on top of that.
Maybe you've heard the term fixed costs, fixed costs, So overheads and fixed costs are two terms that are usually used to describe the same things.
So you can use the word overheads if you really want to sound like you understand the big picture of the business.
And I'll see you next time investing in their staff's communication skills.
So maybe your company's overheads pay for your sessions with me.
Maybe not, but if your company's willing to pay for that, then maybe we can work together.
My full-time job is helping international professionals who use English at work to improve their communication skills.
So if you need English to do your job but you don't speak it natively, then I would love to meet you.
If you'd like to book some time to meet with me through one-to-one video calls, just you and me, then you can go to BreakoutBusinessEnglish.com.
That's the title of the podcast, BreakoutBusinessEnglish.com and find out more.
Starting on our very first call, we can focus on the specific opportunities that you personally have to improve your English and communication skills and the mistakes that you make most often or cause the biggest problems with your communication.
And right now you can use the code PODCAST30 that's PODCAST30 at checkout to get a 30 discount off your first booking of 30, 45 or 60 minutes whichever is best for you.
Sometimes my calendar gets a little busy, so if you have trouble finding a time that works for you, then you can always send me a message through the contact page on the website and ask if I have any time to fit you in.
I've worked with over 1000 non-native English speaking professionals, from new graduates up to CEOs and government leaders, to help them achieve their goals, and I look forward to meeting you.
And hopefully you can tell me in our first session that your boss is paying for your English coaching.
Okay, let's move on to the more interesting stuff.
And this is the money that the company spends on you.
This usually happens when you are traveling for work or buying small things for the office.
Here are three examples of how we can talk about this.
If you pay for the taxi yourself, don't worry, the company will reimburse you next month.
I used my per diem to buy a nice dinner while I was at the conference.
We ran out of coffee, so I took some money from the petty cash to buy a new bag.
We ran out of coffee, so I took some money from the petty cash to buy a new bag.
Let's look at that first verb, to reimburse.
To reimburse.
In the example we heard.
If you pay for the taxi yourself, don't worry, the company will reimburse you next month.
The company will reimburse you next month.
This is a formal sounding word, but it's actually relatively simple.
It means to pay someone back.
If you look at the word, it has re at the beginning, which means again or back.
And it almost has purse in it, that being a bag for money, which we talked about earlier with budget.
So when someone reimburses you or you get reimbursed, you are putting the money back into someone's purse, someone's bag of money.
In a lot of companies.
If you buy a train ticket or a meal for yourself or maybe a meal for a client or a customer, and you do that with your own credit card, you have to claim expenses.
This means that you give the receipt to the accounting department and they reimburse you.
Now, let's look at a different way to handle travel money and that is using a per diem, a per diem.
In the second example we heard, I used my per diem to buy a nice dinner while I was at the conference.
I used my per diem to buy a nice dinner.
So this is even more Latin, but unlike budget and reimburse, which both have their roots in the Latin language, this phrase really hasn't changed for many centuries.
Per, P-E-R, is a word that you likely already know, and it simply means each.
If I assign one parking space per member of staff, that means that they get one each.
And diem, that's D-I-E-M, well, that simply means day in modern English.
So we have per day, per diem, per day.
So in that case, what do you think we mean when we use per diem or per day to talk about money when traveling for work?
A per diem is a fixed amount of money that the company gives you each day when you are traveling.
And as you might have noticed from the examples, we use this as a noun.
Your company gives you a per diem.
You have a per diem.
The great thing about a per diem is that you don't usually have to show receipts for every small thing.
The company says here is 50 euros for today.
Spend it on food and drink.
And if you only spend 20 euros, then you often get to keep the rest, which isn't bad.
It's a very common phrase to hear if you work in a company that requires a lot of travel.
And let's look at that phrase, petty cash.
Petty cash.
That's P-E-T-T-Y, cash.
In the example we heard, I took some money from the petty cash to buy a new bag of coffee.
I took some money from the petty cash.
The word petty comes from the French word petit.
P-E-T-I-T, petty, which means small.
So, petty cash is literally small cash.
And, as always, my sincere apologies to any native French speakers listening for my almost certainly terrible pronunciation.
I have two members of my family who are fluent in French, who both spent years living in Switzerland, in the French speaking part of Switzerland.
And yeah, neither of them have ever been impressed with my French.
In many offices there is a small box or a drawer with a small amount of physical cash, of coins and notes, maybe 50 or 100 euros.
This is used for small things like buying a birthday card for a colleague, paying for a short taxi ride or buying milk for the office kitchen.
It's for things that are too small or minor to go through the formal reimbursement system.
Or maybe they are just needed too quickly.
After all, no one wants to file an expense report every time the kitchen runs out of tea bags.
That's where the petty cash comes in.
So we've had a very etymology focused session today.
A lot of etymology.
Etymology is the study of where words come from.
But we've been talking about money as a society for a long time.
Maybe it was the first thing that we talked about.
Certainly, it's the first thing that we maybe needed to talk about.
And for this reason a lot of our vocabulary around money goes back many, many years, hundreds and thousands of years.
Don't forget that if you would like to discuss any of the ideas, vocabulary or grammar, etc.
In today's episode or work on your communication skills more generally, then you can book a session to work with me on your English communication skills by going to wwwbreakoutbusinessenglishcom.
That's breakoutbusinessenglish.com.
Or you can click the link in the show notes and use the code PODCAST30.
That's PODCAST30 at checkout to get a 30% discount off your first booking.
I've worked with well over 1000 non-native English speaking professionals, from new graduates up to CEOs and government leaders, to help them achieve their goals.
And I look forward to meeting you.
Equally if you're in the process of applying for jobs.
I spend about 30 of my time these days helping people prepare for job interviews.
So give me a call.
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That is it for today.
Thank you so much for listening.
And as always for your time, I know how valuable it is.
And I really do appreciate and respect your choice to spend some of your time with this podcast.
I hope you have a great week and I'll talk to you again next time on the Breakout Business English Podcast.
Thanks a lot, everyone.
Talk to you soon.
