Daily Dose of English 55
Cash
Daily Dose of English 55
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about cash. Cash, money, or bills, or what are other words, banknotes, dough. A lot of these are just different words for cash or for money. However, I'm specifically talking about cash because we've talked about credit cards in the past. We also touched on debit cards. However, today we're talking about the physical bills that you can use to pay for things or cash. Cash is a pretty common thing in the world despite having these other options like debit cards and credit cards because there are some things that cash does really, really well. Um, and we often, okay, actually let's talk about why cash is useful. Cash is nice because it is a lot more real and fast and clear. When you look at a bill that says it says 10 is worth and you can give it to somebody instantaneously. and you don't have to rely on internet or connection or a bank or anything like that. You're able just to pay somebody $10 with a single action by handing them a thing. And this thing is worth $10. We'll get into that in a second about why money is worth something in that sense. But that ability to just pay for something in a simple, quick way is very useful. It's very efficient and it's hard to misunderstand something or have something be just confusing. A big thing with people, especially online shopping, is that when you spend money with credit cards or debit cards, it feels like you're not really spending money. It doesn't feel the same as if you handed over $100. If you have a 100. But if you swipe a card and suddenly $100 is out of some bank account somewhere that you have to pay off later in the month, it's a lot less real in our minds. And so a lot of people only try to use cash because they're aware that if they don't, they will likely spend more money. And that's totally a true thing. If you use cash, you're much less likely to randomly spend it just because it's not as easy. But in some ways, that makes it easier to think about, which is sort of weird and backwards. Some places, some parts of the world use cash more than others. We often call these cash-based societies or cash-based as like the adjective for something. So for example, Germany is pretty cash-based. Germany tends to use a lot more cash than other similarly developed nations or countries that have similar economies. And it's partly a cultural thing, right? A lot of people just feel more comfortable with cash because not only is it more real and tangible, but there's also this added layer of animosity. What's the word? It's where it's, you can't, know who's doing something. Animosity, that's not the right word. Whatever. People can't look at your transaction history, the list of things that you've bought, like you can on a credit card. It's more, oh God, I have the word right there. I can't think of it. Autonomous, no, that's last episode. Okay, I can't think of the word, I'm sorry. There's a word that starts with an A. Ambiguous, nope, that's not it either. God, this is gonna bother me, isn't it? Maybe you can think of the word. If you can, let me know down below, but I just cannot think of the word. It's when you're, animosity. Oh, anonymous, aha, I did it, I found it. Oh, oh my God, I just hit my light. I got so excited, I threw my hands in the air and I hit my light. Cash is more anonymous. Anonymous is when nobody knows who did something. Because if you go buy something with cash, all that the person who sold you the thing can do is be like, yeah, they were kind of tall and had hair, right? They paid with cash, so I can't trace them in any way. people not necessarily fear being tracked or traced. Some people do, but it's this different level of like, I'm able just to pay for this thing and I got my, the thing that I wanted and I can now go. It's, it's this level of, of, um, It's sort of hard to explain because I do that as well. I often use cash to buy things if I can, just because it's a lot easier in my mind. I don't have to worry about my credit card working or having to deal with how much money is there or limits or anything like that. I can just hand over the cash, get my change, and then be on my way. And I don't necessarily have to have proof of that. So especially if you're going somewhere where that's not a common thing. Like I said, Germany is a pretty cash-based society, but also there's lots of parts of the world where cash is really the only option because there's not the infrastructure for doing online payments. Infrastructure is a big word to describe when there's some sort of system in place to make something possible. And so in the case of paying with a card, people have to be able to accept your card, right? They have to be able to take your card and run it through a machine. And that machine talks to the bank and the bank says, yes, you can have this money. And they have to have an account. Like all of that is infrastructure. And if there's no infrastructure, then somebody can't take your card payment. In many countries, so more card-based societies, there is that infrastructure. The U.S. is pretty card-based. There are some parts that are cash-only or cash-based, but there are many places that predominantly deal with credit cards or debit cards. Like, that's the main way to pay. In fact, if a place only accepts cash in the US, they almost always have a big sign outside saying cash only, only accepts cash because people will not expect it. They will walk inside and they will be like, okay, I'll get all of these things. And they'll be like, sorry, we only take cash. And they'll be like, oh no, I don't have any cash. I can't buy these things. And so it can be a bit of a problem if you don't announce it very clearly. But then in other parts of the world, like I said, that is the default, and accepting card is less common. Some parts of the world use other things. I know that China uses WeChat transfer as like the number one way to use to transfer money. I don't even know if cash is really a thing there. Other countries, it really depends on the country and how the economy works and then the culture as well. And then also, like I said, the person, right? Some people prefer cash. for various reasons, so whether it's for anonymity, that's a similar word to anonymous, right, is if you want to have anonymity. That's a hard word to say, though, if you wanna pronounce it, anonymity, anonymity. It's fun, though. Or if you're doing something where it's just quicker and easier. For example, if you're selling water at an event or something, and your waters are $2 or something, sometimes it can just be faster, right? You just don't wanna deal with cards, and so you can say, cash only, people give you $2, you give them the water, and they move on, right? You're going one, two, three, four, really quickly. It also helps you avoid fees. We talked about this in an episode about credit cards, where credit cards have a small fee. And so a lot of places will give you a slight discount, so they'll charge you a little bit less if you pay with cash. Usually it's like 15 to 20 cents, so it's not that much, but it can be a decent chunk of money over time in your life if you only paid with cash your entire life. Some other cash related words I already used is change. So change is when you pay for something and they give you some money back, that's change. So let's say for example, you're buying something that is 20 bill, you're gonna get $6 in change. Um, the annoying thing is that the word changes also means like coins. And so if you have coins, those can be called change. So if you ask somebody, Hey, do you have any change that's asking, Hey, do you have any coins? And so another funny thing there is that 6 back. But 6 plus a little bit of extra, like $6.26 or something like that. However, in spoken English, those sound almost identical. 6 and change, right? Those sound almost identical because that's just how English works. It's an interesting language. But anyways, I think I've talked enough about change, no, cash for today. So I hope that you enjoyed this episode and maybe learned a few words. Let me know if you thought of the word anonymous down below, but I'll see you again tomorrow for another episode. Have a good one. Bye.
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