Real Easy English Easy level Talking about saving money

 

Introduction

Beth and Phil have a real conversation in easy English about saving money. Learn to talk about budgets, deals and offers.

Vocabulary

budget
a set amount of money you plan to spend

shop around
look in several places for the best price before buying something

offer/deal
special low price for something

on offer
has a special, cheaper price

Transcript

Beth
Hello and welcome to Real Easy English. In this podcast, we have real conversations in easy English to help you learn. I'm Beth.

Phil
And I'm Phil. Remember, you can watch this podcast with subtitles to help you on our website, bbclearningenglish.com.

Beth
Hello, Phil, how are you doing? 

Phil
Hi, Beth. I'm great. What about you?

Beth
I'm good. Although I spent a lot of money this weekend. And interestingly, today we are talking about saving money. Now, on the podcast we have talked about money before, but today we are going to be talking about how to save money, not spend it as much. 

Phil
That could be very useful, I'm sure.

Beth
OK. Let's start.

Phil
OK. Beth, are you good at saving money?

Beth
Yes. I think I'm quite good at saving money. Although I do really enjoy going out and enjoying myself, so I'm quite happy to go out with friends and spend some money. But I don't think I waste money. I don't spend it on, on things that I don't need. What about you? Are you good at saving?

Phil
I think I'm similar. I'm quite careful with money, so I don't spend lots of money on new clothes and things like that. There are some things I'll spend money on, but it's always within what I can afford. And if I have to spend a lot of money, I tend to think about it a lot beforehand. I find it quite hard. So, yeah, I'm quite careful with money, and that makes it easy to save money.

Beth
Yeah. Is there anything that you're saving for at the moment?

Phil
Yes. We've got a big holiday coming up. I'm going to Argentina for Christmas with the family. But that's very expensive. So, yeah, we're putting money towards that.

Beth
OK. Yeah. I'm also saving for a holiday at the moment, So we've decided we have a budget. So that means a specific amount of money that we're going to spend, and we're saving up that amount, and we're hopefully not going to spend any more than that.

Phil
Are you good at sticking to a budget? 

Beth
Yeah, I think I am good at sticking to a budget. I make sure that I try to spend less and save more. So one thing I do with holidays, but also with any big thing that I'm buying, is I shop around. So I go to different websites or different shops and make sure that I'm getting the best thing for the best price. Because as you know, you might find the same thing on one website for £100 more than something else. So I think shopping around is a good way to save money. Have you got any tips on saving money? 

Phil
Well, I definitely do that. I definitely shop around. Especially if it's something big. I'll look at where I can get it cheaper. The other thing I do, I do my food shopping every week online, and I go to the website and the first thing I look at is I look at the offers. I look to see if there's anything that we always buy that I can get cheaper. And I try to again, more or less stick to a budget. So maybe buy different things in different weeks. If something's a bit expensive, I don't buy it very often, maybe once a month rather than every week.

Beth
Yeah, I think those offers are really good. When you see something that's buy one, get one free or 50p off. I think that's always a good way to save money. But sometimes you see an offer and you think, 'I really need this thing'. And actually, maybe you don't need it. You just see the offer and think, ‘I can save money’. And actually you end up spending more money.

Phil
Yeah. It can be hard to resist a good deal, can't it?

Beth
That's true.

Phil
When you see one of them, maybe the offer doesn't save you money. 

Beth
That's true. Yeah.

OK, let's recap the vocabulary we heard during the conversation. We had budget. A budget is a plan for how much you want to spend.

Phil
If you shop around for something, you look in several places to try and find the cheapest price.

Beth
We also heard offer, which is a special lower price for something, and we can also describe something as being on offer.

Phil
We also had deal which is similar to offer. If a shop has a deal on, then they lower the price to encourage you to buy something.

Beth
That's it for this episode of Real Easy English. Why not test what you've learnt on our website where we have a worksheet: bbclearningenglish.com.

Phil
We'll be back next week with another real easy English conversation. See you then.

Beth
Goodbye.

Phil
Bye.