Money

It’s been called everything from dirty to downright essential. While we wish we could live without it, we need it in order to get by. This powerful paper has put a spell on us, it’s put us in our place and clearly captivated us. We’ll dig deep into dollars and cents as we make sense of money on today’s FYI. 

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Transcript

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show me the money[Music] show me the money it's been called everything from dirty to downright essential while we wish we could live without it we need it in order to get by this powerful paper has put a spell on us it has put us in our place and clearly captivated us we'll dig deep into dollars and cents as we make sense of money on today's fyi welcome to for your info english you got it[Music][Applause][Music] hello hello hello everybody and welcome to another exciting edition of for your english i just want to remind you guys that if you like this show it really helps if you leave a little rating or something you know on apple itunes i know you can give it five stars i'm not sure if you can rate it on spotify but on ivox you can rate it as well so if you like the program i ask you to do two things spread the word the funding and give it a little rating tell us why you like the program and that'll give it more visibility many more people will be able to discover this program well of course if you find it useful if you don't find it useful what are you doing listening to it right now i'm just joking i imagine you find it useful so that's why i ask you to spread the word and let people know that there's a fun way to learn english while learning about all different topics and today we're going to talk about money that's right so let's take a look at our intro before we talk turkey to talk turkey is hablar inserio yeah i know it doesn't sound very serious but to talk turkey means to talk seriously so i said it's been called everything from dirty sutheal a lot of times we talk about dirty money just be careful with the pronunciation a lot of my students say dirty right they say dirty dancing right but it's not it's dirty it's like as if that i were an e so it's been called everything from dirty to downright essential now this word downright means another way to say that is thoroughly so it's dirty to downright essential there i go with my alliteration and are you ready for this next sentence let's see how many w's there are in there ws while we wish we could live without it while we wish we wow there's four and then without that's five w's while we wish is mientras de sillamos poderbibir sinego to live without it we need it lonnie sitamos in order to get by and a lot of times we talk about money as a necessary evil it's something we need that if we didn't need to pay rent alkiled or a mortgage well then maybe we wouldn't need as much money and there's always that debate of how much do you need to be happy and as we say that's a slippery slope a slippery slope is then i said in the intro i said in order to this is a great structure that means confinde in order to and i said we need it in order to get by salir del paso a panarce then more alliteration coming your way i said this powerful paper is because in the end you know people say it's just paper but we've given it that value is so this powerful paper has put a spell on us right to put a spell on someone una chito is a spell and it has put us in our place now i hate to admit this but uh a lot of times and this is called classism we treat people differently if they have money or if they don't have money or if they have power uh as opposed to being powerless so it does put us in our place unfortunately because let's be honest uh money is not the the main indicator of somebody's character no not at all money doesn't make the person i always say money doesn't buy class but there's one thing that i think we can all agree on it has clearly captivated us right to captivate is to grab our attention and let's let's be honest why do we watch these reality shows well i don't but why are they so popular keeping up with the kardashians why are we so obsessed with this lifestyle with people who have money and mansions and all this hey i'm a victim too sometimes i find myself strangely interested in the rich and famous and in fact there was even a popular show on tv in the united states called lifestyles of the rich and famous so let's be honest it's always captivated us then i said we'll dig deep into dollars and cents so to dig es cavar and to dig deep is eat in profundo no profundidad we'll dig deep into dollars and cents and i don't know if you caught that pun that play on words i said as we make sense of money so you see what i did there sense centimos and sens sentido and to make sense of something is encontrarle el centido naturally so we're going to make sense of dollars and cents on today's fyi so i thought we should start out with something simple let's look at the definition of money if you look up money in the dictionary look up then let's see what it says it says and i quote a current medium of exchange now current is actual something that is current is now right it's being used now in the present day a current medium of exchange in per cambio in the form of coins monedas and banknotes we can call them bills or banknotes queso los bietes so that's pretty straightforward straightforward esque mucho mysterio it's pretty straightforward but you know what i'm not too worried about the definition i think that's the simple part the hard part from my experience is pronouncing the word so many of my students say moni mo like m-o but it's not pronounced like that it's pronounced money money i think of other words that sound the same or other words that rhyme and i think of funny gracioso honey right which is so it's not funny honey we don't have any money hey there you go if you can remember that sentence then you'll remember that all three of those words rhyme but you cannot you must not pronounce it monet it's money like honey and funny but if you have trouble with that well just like in spanish we have a lot of different names a lot of different alternate names that we use when talking about money let me give you some in the united states we say moolah moolah to have moolah is to have money another one we say is dough now this reminds me of pasta in spanish no tengo pasta i don't have any dough and be careful though because dough is pasta or masa and batter suave so but the one we refer to money we talk about do then we say cash cash is effective or cold hard cash because cold hard cash i've heard the british call their money quid mate can i get 20 quid please and that would be 20 pounds so lots of different nicknames other ones in the states cheese yeah cheese cheddar yeah it's it's weird we associate money with cheese with cheddar another one which reminds me of a song a rap song it's all about the benjamin's baby what is he talking about well he's talking about benjamin franklin but he's really talking about hundred dollar bills vietnamese benjamin franklin is on the hundred dollar bill so a lot of times we'll refer to the bill by the president that's on it and you want to know another name for money for bills dead presidents absolutely well think about it they're dead presidents that are on there and you'll only see dead presidents on there i i researched it when i was preparing this episode and i was curious i said you know is obama going to be on a coin or or trump god forbid is he going to be on a coin or a bill anytime soon well no don't hold your breath don't hold your breath the key word there is dead presidents in the 18th century legislation was enacted that forbids to forbidden the depiction of living people on u.s currency so you'll never find a living president or leader on currency so sorry obama sorry trump not yet and we just looked at the word current which is actual but the word currency is the money system you say moneda in spanish and in fact if you've ever been to an airport and you go to japan well you have to go get the local currency la moneda local so that's another way you'll see it in the airport's currency exchange intercambio de monedas so we talked about bills or notes que son los bietes we talked about coins as well but what coins do we have at least in the united states i can tell you i don't know too much about the british coins but i can tell you about the american ones now the smallest denomination is one penny or one cent and anybody uh who has ever had an old penny will realize that the old pennies turn green for some reason and it's the same green as the statue of liberty and you know what there's a link i um absolutely now metal is exposed to the elements it rusts well let's just say that pennies and the statue of liberty are made from the same metal that's right it's copper and what happens to copper when it rusts it turns green so there's a good trivia question the original color of the statue of liberty it's a golden color a copper color but thanks to the elements it has turned green so anytime you find an old penny you'll see there's a little green in it and it's the exact same green in fact i think they should call it the statue of liberty green but let's be honest pennies are quite worthless in fact i think they say that there's more value in the medal than the actual value of the coin so pennies same thing as fentimos here in europe you're kind of like okay it's good but i need a lot of them then next up we have nickels and nickels are five cent coins then we have dimes a dime is a 10 cent coin then we have quarters a quarter is a quarter of a dollar and we also have 50 cent pieces we have dollar coins we have dollar bills and uh well some of them are collectors items and some of them are in circulation now i imagine that many of you have heard the word buck right have you seen it when you're watching a movie 20 bucks i think you say bente babos well there's a reason behind this now a buck back in the day a buck is a male deer un fierbo and back in the day in aquilintonthis they used deerskin that's right la piel de un thierbo as trade they would trade things for deerskins and supposedly one deerskin was the equivalent of one dollar so what did we do we said well one buck wow so it had to do with skin with deer skin that's right not just any deer but a buck a male deer then where does the bubbles come from because in spain you say 20 turkeys we say bente fierbos you say bente pavos well i looked into it and you used to call five pesetas in fact i remember those days i'm dating myself right now but i remember thinking and so they started to call it a pavo because that was exactly how much a turkey cost with five pesetas with unduro you could get un pavo so those two words are a lot more related than we thought they were okay they're different animals but the idea of trading and using animals as trade and barter another way to say trade well that goes way back and we still use that terminology i think it's awesome another interesting etymology is to shell out now to shell out money is sold i had to shell out twenty dollars so i'll give you an example i had to go to the mechanic yesterday because my car broke down and i had to shell out pagar gastar 500. now shell is concha so do you think that it has something to do with shells well you bet pues claro que si in fact at one point native americans they used to use shells as currency so uh later the european colonists when they went there they said well they're giving us shells why don't we call it to shell out and shell out is another way to say to pay i love these interesting etymologies and in a little bit we'll take a look at some useful vocabulary and idioms now one thing that's fascinated me over the last well i should say over the course of my life is the fact that when we were kids there was a lot more cash circulating cash you say metallico effectivo and well as the years go on there's less and less cash now porque uso less instead of fewer well it's quite simple remember this less is used for uncountable nouns and fewer is used for countable nouns now i know what you're thinking you're thinking yeah but we can count money well technically money is uncountable the way they see it is that money is uncountable but coins and bills so there are fewer bills in existence but there's less money see the difference so remember if we're talking about the individual bills or coins those we would use fewer but in the other case of uncountable nouns such as money we would use less the same way how much is used with uncountables so you never say how many money you say how much money do you have or how much money do you have to shell out to use that other word in context well this this statistic was mind boggling only eight percent of the world's currency is in cash right now so that means there is a lot of electronic money out there and that's pretty scary because i always think about that now i i don't know if that's a reality but let's say i have twenty thousand dollars in my savings account okay it's not true but let's just say that i have twenty thousand dollars in my savings account it's very easy to turn that into two thousand you just have to remove a zero or two and voila so that's it's convenient it's you know paying with your watch this contactless pay which i think it's it's really good to be able to pay without touching especially in this post-covered age or i shouldn't say post we're still in the middle of it so people are more and more people that maybe didn't want to do away with cash now to do away with this this aff are now opting for contactless and i understand it as somebody who doesn't want to touch money as we said before money is it's got a reputation for being a bit dirty and in the second part of the show we're going to take a look at dirty money all the different kinds of things that you can find on money and after i tell you that i'll tell you right now you're not going to want to hold bills or coins in your hand ever again and well if you guys want access to that the bonus part of the show remember all you have to do is go over to patreon.com slash alberto alonso and you can find out what our english adventure is all about there are all different levels for all different budgets so if you want bonus audio if you want pdfs with all the vocabulary you can get that and you can get it for peanuts peanuts is a way we say very little money peanuts cacao with this yes but it also means not too much money as we say it's affordable and especially because you're going to learn over 300 words a week on these podcasts with the bonus audio and our higher level students they have access to classes with me every week and also a monthly class so if you're interested or just want to get some more information go over to patreon.com slash alberto alonso and find out what so many other students have already discovered that said i want to send a shout out and a thank you to all my patrons for making this show possible remember this show is self-produced i do it on my own time so thank you to all of you who are students and are joining me on this english adventure that said i want to send a shout out to my super duper students hugo roberto jose maria carolina javier mila deside suzy alex patricio boris edgar and and don't forget about my interstellar students diego diana carmen and pilar thank you so much to each and every one of you keep up the good work and those of you who want to be a part of it just let me know i'll send you some samples unas muestras just take a look at patreon.com alberto alonso and let me know if you have any questions so yeah that statistic really blew my mind only eight percent of the world's currency is cash it's only eight percent of the world's currency is tangible where you can actually see it i imagine the rest of it is stockpiled in the cayman islands the cayman islands as you guys know is a tax haven i think you guys call it um paraiso fiscal now be careful it's not heaven it's haven a tax haven and now is the part of the show where we're gonna look at some pointers some tips now remember this guys i don't have any financial experience i'm just a guy like you who's trying to get better at managing my money because let's be honest when you're young you don't really think too much about the future but once you have kids well it's really important to save right to save as aura and for that you'll need a savings account because obviously savings accounts give you more interest than your typical checking account so you start to think about your future you start to think about saving up for a house or your child's education and uh you you have what we call a nest egg we call it tussauros a nest but how are we ever going to save money if we can't get out of debt and that's that's one of the things i feel like the system that we've created especially in the united states is a system that keeps people or maintains people in debt in del dados remember the word debt has a silent b we don't pronounce it so to to have a lot of debt or to be in debt and obviously the opposite is to get out of debt so that's the first thing i would recommend if you have a lot of debt get out of that debt as soon as possible uh because a lot of those things well they're designed to keep you paying for the rest of your life and there's some good vocabulary to pay off something is to pay it off in installments no pagarlo implatos so for example i'm paying off my mortgage i'm paying off the loan i asked for last year right pedirum prestamo is to ask for a loan and once you ask for a loan well you can either get accepted or rejected depending on your credit in the united states everybody has a credit score so depending on how many credit cards you've used if you've successfully paid everything off on time that will make your credit score higher or lower now i know in spain what they look for is your contract your last pay stub ultimo nomina and things like that but you can't save money if you're in debt now again i'm no expert but it seems like that's pretty black and white and speaking of experts uh you know i i got somebody to help me out i got an accountant to help me out because i man it's a headache for people who don't understand all that terminology and taxes and all of this i want to do things by the book quiet de las cosas excuse me i want to follow the rules i don't want to break the rules but again sometimes i feel like these rules are written for only certain people to understand them and i gotta say i got an accountant it took me 40 years but finally at around age 40 i got an accountant and i don't pay him very much come you know when i think about it it's it's a very small amount or as i said before it's peanuts uh compared to all the headaches i've gotten rid of because now if i have to bill somebody to build somebody is a another way to say a bill is an invoice well then i got to know what's the percentage what's the vat the value-added tax you say eva if i'm not mistaken and you know what i speak english i speak spanish but i don't speak financial jargon so this accountant carlos a big shout out to carlos he has saved my life he's made my life so much easier so now when something comes in the mail that says i just send it to him and i'm telling you my life has gotten easier so you can hire hyrus contratar an accountant you can also get a financial advisor or consultant that can help you as well in fact some of our patrons i know work in the banking industry so maybe you can reach out to them and they can give you some tips on how to invest to invest this in bertir and investing is there are a lot of different ways to invest obviously you can invest in property or real estate in mobiliaria by getting a mortgage there are also bonds bonds or bonds in spanish are bonos so there are government bonds some people invest in the stock market la bolsa i mean it depends on how much money you have and well how risky you are right how many risks you want to take remember we say the same thing you we can say to take risks or to run risks just like in spanish correr riescos so if you're like me i don't like taking risks in fact i don't have any stocks stocks actions but i do have property but there are many many different financial products out there for you to diversify but be careful because you don't want to lose your shirt como de timos no quieres per se because then you'll end up broke and broke is sin blanca all right well we've already looked at some useful vocabulary and idioms but let's look at a few more before we wrap up the first part of today's fyi i hope you guys are learning a lot of good vocabulary and i hope you put it into practice well at least the savings part now the first word that came to mind when i was thinking what words do i want to teach them that we use that are related to cash that are related to money and the first one that popped into my mind is to cash in on something now this is interesting because it has two prepositions to cash in on it so i'll give it to you in context many actors many performers like to cash in on their success and they start doing other products they do endorsements and other things like that so to cash in on i think the translation in spanish would be so it's not just it doesn't only have to do with money but it has to do with making the most of something taking advantage of something to cash in on and if we take out the on if we just say to cash in to cash in is what you do at a casino so you have your chips to features and it's time to cash in and to cash in is literally bring your chips and get your money to cash in now if you're like me and you're not a gambler well you're never going to really cash in but again remember it's not only used in the literal sense another thing that sometimes can be a bit confusing is asking somebody for change right now you can always ask do you have any change but then if you ask somebody if they have any change you're asking them if they have any loose change right something i used to ask my father when when i was a kid dad do you have any loose change a way that we would say this in the united states is can you break a 10 can you break a 20 can you break a 50 and to break means afer cambio so that would be a more uh native way to say what is that can you break a 10 can you break a 20 you can also say do you have change for a 20 do you have change for a 10 but remember we're trying to sound more native i also wanted to look at some bank vocabulary now i'll be honest uh i don't remember the last time i was physically in a bank i'm that kind of guy who pays with my watch and i take money out at the atm remember the atm is el cajero automatico the automated teller machine and a teller is persona so it's the same word atm now i know in some parts of the english-speaking world they don't call it an atm i'm sure they're familiar with the term but if you want to avoid confusion you could always say a cash machine so what can you do with a cash machine well as i just said you can take money out or withdraw money right to take money out or to withdraw money is sacar pasta also i've never done this but you can deposit money or you can put money into the bank as well again i haven't used all the functions the only thing i do at an atm is withdraw or take out money but that doesn't mean you shouldn't check your bank account you shouldn't check your balance i think you call it dusaldo your balance you can do that online in fact now banking has become an online experience and i think the banks that are doing really well right now currently are the ones that have adapted really well to this digital world and their apps are user-friendly user-friendly as fafil deus are para qualciara so things you can do of course you have to sign in you got to put in your password and then you can see your different accounts you can see your checking account your checking account estu quinta corriente because back in the day with your checking account you would get a checkbook and a check is and in the united states i remember when i was a young kid people wrote checks now it's not as common but it's still called a checking account and your movimientos are not called your movements we call them transactions and we'll wrap up the first part of today's episode with an expression that i think is just it hits the nail on the head lo clava now in spanish you say el tiempo es oro we say time is money that's right time is money what does that mean it means time is probably the most valuable thing that you will ever have in your life and if you don't think so think about this it's a reflection i've been having over and over i always say this money comes and goes time just goes so that said we have run out of time no semos querados in the first part of the show but if you'd like to join us for the bonus part remember think about becoming a patron or just drop me a line and i can send you some bonus content just to see if you like it thank you so much for joining us in this episode of fyi show me the money[Music] show me the money[Music] show me