Hey everybody, welcome to another phrasal verb episode.
I hope you're doing great today and I hope that you're in the mood to learn a couple new phrasal verbs.
In this episode, we're going to look at two phrasal verbs.
The first one is average out, and the other one is average out to...
Or average out at.
You might see it with both of those different prepositions at the end, but it's the same thing really.
So I'm including that as just one phrasal verb.
Average out to or average out at.
So we're going to look at these two phrasal verbs that are very similar, of course, but they're used differently in terms of the grammar and their usage within a sentence.
So first let's look at average out.
So when things average out, what we're saying is that they are becoming equal or similar over a period of time.
So, for example, i could say i think the positives and negatives will average out.
What I'm saying here in this sentence is that I think that after the time has passed, if we count up all the positives and all the negatives, they will be very similar or the same in number.
So they will average out.
Does that make sense?
So these two things are becoming equal or similar over a period of time.
Maybe there are more positives now and then more negatives later and eventually they average out.
So that's average out.
And how about average out to.
I'll just use to instead of at.
So average out to means to have a particular number or amount as the average.
So, for example, my business expenses vary each year, but they average out to around 10 of my revenue.
So what I'm saying here is that my business expenses are different every year.
They vary, but they average out to around 10 of my revenue.
So if I take the different number from different years and I find the average, it averages out to 10 of my revenue.
Okay, so now i'm going to talk about a certain topic and i'm going to use these two phrasal verbs repeatedly throughout my time talking about this topic, and so you can hear these phrasal verbs used in different sentences in a repeated manner, so that they can stick in your brain.
So I want to talk about investing and, in particular, I want to talk about the concept of dollar cost averaging.
So before I talk about this, I need to mention that I am definitely not giving investment advice here, okay.
I'm just talking about this topic because it's a good topic to talk about, in order to insert these phrasal verbs into my sentences.
So what is... cost averaging when it comes to investing?
Well, this is a certain investment strategy that is a long-term strategy.
It's not for people who are trying to make a lot of money really fast.
It's for people that want to invest over a very long period of time, and it's often used for people that want to grow their investments and earn dividends from their investments.
So how this works is that people invest a fixed amount of money on a regular basis, and they do this regardless of the price.
The price doesn't.
So let's say they invest 100 every month on the first day of the month in a certain stock or something.
It could be anything.
But let's say they invest $100 every in a certain stock on the first day of every month.
And they do this no matter what, regardless of whether the price is high or low.
They do this consistently every month.
So when they do this, of course sometimes they buy when prices rise are high and sometimes they buy when prices are low, because prices go up and down throughout time.
But over time this number averages out.
So some months it's higher, some months it's lower, but this can average out over time.
Or maybe The price can actually trend upwards over many years.
If we just look at the stock market and see that it tends to go up throughout the decades.
Maybe certain prices trend upwards, but you get what I'm saying.
If I buy a certain stock 12 times this year on the first day of every month, and sometimes the price is high, sometimes it's low, it kind of averages out right.
I'm not explaining this very well and those of you who do dollar cost averaging are probably shaking your heads at me, because I'm giving a very kind of basic illustration of this and it's not even that well explained coming out of my mouth.
But you'll forgive me for this, okay?
But the main point of this is that these highs and lows average out.
They average out over time.
Sometimes it's higher, sometimes it's lower.
And this is a long-term strategy, of course, because maybe things are trending downwards in the short term, meaning in the short term, prices are getting lower.
They're negative.
The stock market is going down, right?
But at some point things will turn around probably, and the stock market will probably go up And prices will go up, so it will average out.
You bought prices at a certain price before and a different price later.
And regardless of the fluctuation of the market, you just keep on buying.
And really this strategy is not implemented.
To make a lot of money fast and make strategic decisions.
No, someone who does this is probably not planning on selling this stock anytime soon.
They probably just want to continue accumulating money this stock or whatever and maybe just collect dividends from this stock, so the volatility doesn't really matter.
Volatility or when something is volatile, this means that it is not stable.
It goes up and down.
So someone who invests in this way doesn't need to pay attention to volatility, because markets average out over time.
Sometimes markets are down.
Sometimes they're up, they average out over time.
And so markets receive certain shocks because of certain news or government policies or whatever.
So sometimes things start crashing down, but then eventually they go back up and prices kind of average out.
This is typical when it comes to business and financial markets and things like this.
There are these different cycles of ups and downs, but like I said, these markets often average out.
And so, depending on what your goals are with investing, some people might choose this dollar cost averaging strategy.
Let me give you an example of how prices can average out over a time period.
Let's say I buy a stock this month and the stock is worth $5 this month.
And then next month, I buy the stock again and it's worth $6 per share at that time.
And then the next month, I buy it again and it's worth $7 per share.
And then the fourth month...
I buy it, and it's worth $6 again.
It went down.
So if you take those four numbers, 5, 6, 7, and 6, that averages out to 6.
Those four numbers taken together average out to 6.
So, even though one month it was only worth 5 and another month it was worth seven uh, the average is six.
It averaged out to six, right?
Or here's another example um, if i buy a stock at twelve dollars uh per share this month, and then 9 per share the next month, and then 18 per share the third month, that averages out to 13.
So 12, nine, and 18 average out to 13.
If you don't know how to take the average of something, you just add the numbers together and then you divide by how many numbers there are.
So if i take 12, 9 and 18, these numbers average out to 13.
These numbers average out to 13.
So you can see how that works, right?
I'm probably not as concerned about the price every month if I'm not planning to sell this anytime soon.
If I just want to buy this stock consistently for many, many years, I can just use this strategy and the price averages out, so I'm not only buying it when it's low or only buying it when it's high right.
It's averaging out over time.
So you just saw with those couple examples that I gave you how that these prices fluctuate.
But when you actually take the average, they average out to a number that's right in the middle.
Right.
So people that employ this method of investing really, they just try to stay disciplined and always buy consistently, regardless of whether the price is low or high.
They just keep on buying and they stay disciplined and constant with that.
And then volatility isn't a big deal. because the prices average out.
This strategy is not meant for that, as you've seen, right?
Because with this strategy, you know that things average out and you're just accumulating this stock or whatever, and you're not trying to buy buy when it's low and sell when it's high.
So if your goal is different and you're trying to make money because you're selling a stock for more than you bought it for, then that's different, of course.
So I know this was a more complicated topic.
I hope you were able to follow it still and that you were able to hear these phrasal verbs used repeatedly, and maybe now you can try to use average out or average out to in your own sentences.
And I want to encourage you to use my advanced podcast episodes if you haven't done so already.
You can do that by becoming a Listening Time family member.
The link is down below in the description.
And you can also use my US Conversations podcast, which will help you practice listening to two people talking and not just one.
So that's great practice for your listening.
If you're interested in either of those the membership or my US Conversations podcast you can find those links down below in the description.
All right.
Thank you for listening to this phrasal verb episode, and I'll talk to you in the next one.
