Money & Shopping: The Art Of Spending Smart — C1 English Lesson

And I'm Lena. Today's episode is all about money and shopping, two things everyone has strong feelings about.

Emotional and impulsive. I shop when I'm happy or stressed, and I almost never check my balance first.

I believe it. You once spent three weeks researching a toaster.

Meanwhile I have the opposite problem. I tend to squander money on things I barely use. Last spring I squandered a huge chunk of my savings on kitchen gadgets.

A bread maker, a juicer, a fancy espresso machine. I used each of them twice. Now they just sit there, judging me.

Forty-eight hours? I can't wait forty-eight minutes when there's a sale involved.

You're right. And you know what else I never do? I never try to haggle. I just pay whatever the tag says, even at flea markets.

My grandmother was a master of it. She could haggle a street vendor down to half price and they'd both walk away smiling.

I grew up in a pretty affluent suburb where nobody ever discussed prices. Talking about money was considered terribly rude.

Exactly. The boutiques near my parents add an enormous markup to everything. A simple cotton shirt sells for two hundred dollars, and most of that is pure profit.

And the rent on that street is astronomical, so the markup has to cover that too.

I went to an outlet last month and felt like a genius. I bought a winter coat for a third of the downtown price.

I'm trying to retrain myself. My sister is incredibly thrifty. She furnishes her whole apartment secondhand and it looks like a design magazine.

But then there's my cousin's wedding last summer. The most lavish event I've ever attended. Three hundred guests, a string quartet, fireworks over the lake.

It was both. All that lavish spending, and half the guests left before dessert. They could have invited eighty people and saved a fortune.

True. Some of my favorite evenings have been the simplest. Takeout with friends costs almost nothing and I remember every one.

Oh yes. Two years ago my company gave everyone a surprise bonus. It felt like a total windfall.

I booked a beach vacation within a week. I treated that windfall like free money.

Then my car needed new brakes, and I wished I'd saved at least half of the windfall. Lesson learned the hard way.

I follow that rule now. Speaking of spending, restaurant prices have become absolutely exorbitant lately, don't you think?

That is genuinely exorbitant. At some point expensive doesn't describe it anymore. You need a stronger word.

I've started cooking much more at home. When prices get that exorbitant, restaurants lose me as a customer.

Oh, I did an audit last month and found eleven active subscriptions. Eleven. I was paying for three music services at the same time.

Smart. I canceled seven of them in one evening and instantly felt richer. It was the easiest money I've ever saved.

Exactly. My phone is a casino. I see an ad, I tap, and two days later a box arrives that I barely remember ordering.

Friction is underrated. My grandmother used to say that money should be a little difficult to spend, so you respect it.

She really did. She kept every receipt in a shoebox and balanced her checkbook by hand.

They don't. One more confession: I once bought the same pair of boots twice because I forgot I'd ordered them. They arrived a week apart.

I gave one pair to my sister. She still brings it up at every family dinner.

That's uncomfortably accurate. Now let me ask you something. What's the single best money decision you've ever made?

The gold standard. Pay yourself first, before anyone else gets a cent.

Learning to cook properly in my twenties. It paid for itself a thousand times over. Every meal I make at home is money that stays in my pocket.

So here's a question. All those kitchen gadgets I bought and never used. Is there any way to recoup that money?

I listed the espresso machine yesterday. If it sells, I'll recoup about half of what I paid.

It does feel good. Almost like a small bonus. Okay, be honest with me. Do you ever feel that being this careful makes life less fun?

That's a good philosophy. You know what surprised me, though? Growing up around affluent families taught me that wealthy people negotiate constantly.

My old boss was a millionaire, and he'd spend twenty minutes disputing a forty-dollar fee. He refused to let anyone squander his money, including himself.

So what's the difference between frugal and thrifty? They sound almost identical.

So a frugal person skips the expensive coffee shop, and a thrifty person finds excellent beans on sale and brews at home.

My goal for next year: less lavish impulse buying, more careful planning. And the next time I get an unexpected bonus, I'm saving half before I even celebrate.

I'll do my best. Maybe I'll even teach you to loosen up a little, and you can teach me to tighten up.

Mine: audit your subscriptions twice a year. You'll be shocked at what you're still paying for.

And from me: celebrate the small wins. Every time you resist an impulse buy, that's a victory worth noticing.

See you next time. Remember, your money should work as hard as you do.