Transcript:

Sarah: Hi I’m Sarah.

Jack: And I'm Jack. Welcome to Everyday English.

Sarah: Today we're going to be talking about a pretty important topic – spending
money!

Jack: If you're going to be spending money here in Australia, you're going to be

using these: dollars. The Aussie dollar or Australian dollar is the official
Australian currency. Although here, we just call them dollars.

Sarah: The smaller unit of currency is cents. One dollar is made up of 100 cents.

Jack: One way to spend money is using cash which in Australia comes in notes and
coins. Let's have a look at the different denominations that Australia's currency
comes in. Let's start with the coins. We've got 2 dollars, 1 dollar, 50 cents, 20
cents, 10 cents and 5 cents.

Sarah: And then there are the notes. We've got 5 dollars, 10 dollars, 20 dollars, 50
dollars and 100 dollars. Although I don't see too many of these, do you Jack?

Jack: No, I'm afraid not!

Sarah: Now you can get cash out or withdraw cash from the bank or from
an ATM which stands for automatic teller machine.

Jack: But of course, it’s pretty common for people to pay without cash using a credit
card, a debit card or even your phone.

Sarah: We sometimes call that a cashless transaction or just paying by card. Let's
have a look at a scenario involving spending money.

Sara: Hi Charlotte, how are you?

Charlotte: Good thanks, Sara.

Sara: What can I get for you today?

Charlotte: How much are your sandwiches?

Sara: Sandwiches are 5.50.

Charlotte: What about the pies?

Sara: 4 dollars 60.

Charlotte: Alright I’ll grab a pie and a can of lemonade.

Sara: Yeah no problem. That's just 9 dollars 80.

Sara: Do you have anything smaller? I don’t have much change.

Charlotte: Sorry Sara. I don’t have any loose change. I just went to the ATM and all I
have are 50s. Do you take card?

Sara: Yeah no problem. Credit or savings?

Charlotte: Credit.

Sara: All good.

Charlotte: Thanks so much. Have a good day!

Sara: You too!

Jack: You might have noticed there that when people talked about prices, they often
dropped the words dollars and cents. For example, instead of saying five dollars
fifty cents, we could say five fifty. Or five dollars fifty.

Sarah: You have to listen carefully to the pronunciation of numbers because

sometimes, they can sound quite similar. For example: 50 and 15. It can be hard to
hear the difference between the -ty and the -teen. There's
also thirteen and thirty, fourteen and forty, sixteen and sixty, seventeen and sev
enty, eighteen and eighty and, nineteen and ninety.

Jack: So we've talked about buying smaller things with cash and cards but how
about spending money on bigger things like cars and houses?

Sarah: For bigger purchases like homes or cars, you may have to take out
a loan from the bank. Loanis a noun and it means something that is given out
temporarily, in this case money, with the expectation that it will be given back later.
The verb is lend. And the past tense of lend is lent. If you take out a loan, you
become a borrower. You borrow the bank's money. And you have to repay it
or make repayments. A loan that's for a house is called a home loan or
a mortgage.

Jack: If you take out a loan, you will have to pay interest. That means the amount of
money you owe will increase by a certain percentage.

Sarah: Percentage is a unit of measurement that means a part of 100. So, for
example 50 per cent means half.

Jack: On a home loan you might have to pay 5% interest which means the amount
you owe will increase by 5% every year. Banks will also charge interest on credit
cards which let you spend money that you don't actually have as long as you pay it
back later!

Sarah: Let's have a look at some more words that are associated with spending.
There's buy. The past tense is bought.

I buy lots of clothes.

I bought a nice dress.
Sarah: Purchase which is another word for buy.

I need to make a big purchase.

I purchased a house.
Sarah: You can also sell which means to exchange something for money. The past
tense is sold.

I need to sell my house.

I sold my house.
Sarah: There's transaction which means buying or selling something. For example:

I like to keep a record of my transactions.

Jack: There's price, which the amount of money you have to pay for something.
And cost which means the amount paid to produce something. Although these two
words are often used to mean the same thing.

 What's the price of this item?

 What does this item cost?

Jack: There's expensive which means [an item] has a high price or cost and cheap
or inexpensive - which means it has a low cost. And sometimes you can find
something on sale which means the price has been lowered temporarily.

Sarah: Well, that's just about it from us for now. But before we go, here are some
questions for you to think about:

 What do you usually spend on?

 How do you pay for it?
 Have you taken out a loan before?
 How long did it take you to pay it back?
 How much interest did you have to pay?

Jack: Well we’re off. We’ll see you next time. Bye!