IELTS Speaking for Success - 💶 Cash (Part 1) + Transcript

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

Get access to our episode archive: https://www.patreon.com/ieltssfs How often do you use cash? Do you often bring cash with you? Do you always pay by card? Did you use cash more when you were younger? Is it ok not to have any cash on you? Tune in and have a great day! - Book a class with Rory here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://successwithielts.com/rory⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Our course on Phrasal Verbs: https://successwithielts.com/podcourses Transcript: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://successwithielts.com/s13e08 Find an IELTS Speaking Partner: https://links.successwithielts.com/ieltspartner Our social media: https://linktr.ee/successwithielts © 2025 Podcourses Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, lovely. I'm Maria. My name is Rory, and we're the hosts of the AILT Speaking for Success podcast, the podcast that aims to help you improve your speaking skills, as well as your listening skills along the way. We've started this podcast to give you gorgeous grammar and fabulous vocabulary for your high ILD school. You're a band nine score. Rory, I want new shoes.

Can I borrow some money from you? Sorry, Maria, but I don't carry any cash on me. Oh, it's okay, you can just transfer the money. Just, you know, make an online transfer. I don't need any cash. And now Maria has just ruined our intro in her crusade to get shoes. Let's talk about cash. Cash de listerna money.

Money makes the world go round. And round and round and round and round. Cash. Cash is what, like, the notes, the real money that you can, you know, smell, you can touch. You can, you know, hold it in your hands to listen to coins or notes, you know, bank notes, like physical cash. And we're talking about banknotes or just notes and coins. How often do you use cash? Not much these days, to be honest.

Almost all my payments are contactless. You just tap your card and you're done. Do you often bring cash with you? Well, again, no, I honestly can't remember the last time I paid for anything with coins or notes or anything like that. There's just no need for it nowadays. Do you always pay by card? Almost always, yes. Like there are chip and pen devices everywhere nowadays.

So it's just easier to carry cards with you rather than wads of cash. Or better yet, you can just pay through the contact list on your phone. Did you use cash more when you were younger? Definitely, yes. Not only was it easier to pay with it, I think it was almost always the only acceptable way to pay for things. I think the only exceptions were in places that didn't accept Scottish notes as legal tender,

but that was a rarity and almost never a problem now. Is it okay not to have any cash on you? I mean, so far it's possible. hand out reasonably well. Even in places that don't use chip and pen, you can almost always make direct bank transfers to their accounts. You just need a phone and an internet connection for that. I suppose if I was somewhere more remote and unconnected to the internet, it might be a problem, and I'd prepare in advance, but that's yet to happen. Do you think you'll use cash more in the future?

No, I think it will actually be the reverse, short of some disaster that's stops contactless payments. We all seem to be using money less and less, at least as far as I can tell. As you know, we now release all of our premium content for free, and it's available for one month. After one month, it goes into our super secret archive. To sign up for the archive, click the link in the description below. See you soon. So deal is in cash, coins, banknotes, and such shing. Some countries they do use a lot of cash, but in other countries they use only online payments and cards. And also, for example, in China, they told me that they have online payments, but if you go to a small village, just everyone uses cash.

Is it true? I don't know. I don't know. I've never been to China. Yeah, and it's interesting that they told me, like, even like old people who sell something, they have QR codes and you can make payment online. You know, like a grant buy selling some rice with a QR code in the middle of nowhere. So we use cash. We pay, Roy, what's the proposition? We pay buy cash, in cash. Usually pay by card, but pay with cash or pay in cash.

Yeah. Usually, I'm sure you could get away with other prepositions as well. Or no proposition at all. We can say, like, I usually pay cash for the tickets. So pay in cash or pay cash. Use cash. Use cash. You can run out of cash.

If you don't have any coins or notes on you, you run out of cash. But if you inherit money, you could say you came into some cash. Come into money. And again, like, if the examiner asks you like when, how often you just give a direct answer, a very short answer. Like, how often do you use cash? not much or often every day regularly all my payments are contactless or all payments or i make all payments online or they're contactless so no cash contactless payments pretty much like make a payment using a credit card or a mobile phone so i use contactless payment

or online payments. I just tap my card, tap my phone, so you tap your card when you make a payment. I bring some cash with you, with me, sorry. Or you can say, like, I usually have some cash on me, or I usually bring cash with me. Me personally, I never bring any cash with me. I don't have any cash.

Because someone else is paying? No, Rory, I pay for my stuff. I do have some coins at home, but yeah, I just have my phone. I don't even have a card on me, usually. So I just have my phone and I tap my phone everywhere. So, but you can say, yeah, I often, I always bring some cash with me. For example, my brother, he often brings some cash with him. So he always has cash on him.

He uses cash. And you can say, like, I can't remember the last time I paid for anything with coins or notes. There is no need. I pay for stuff using coins or notes or I don't pay for anything using coins or notes, bank notes. Just there is no need for it. Coins are metal. Notes are folding. They're paper.

Well, they're probably not paper. They're probably fiber. But paper money. And it's so nice sometimes just to feel. the paper money. Like, mm, you feel it. Money, money, money. When I see paper money, I just go, oh yeah, paper money. I just say, I touch the money. I just smell the money.

Ooh, paper. Because yeah, for me, like, I don't remember the last time I actually had some paper money in my hands. No, actually like physically holding money. We pay by card. So we pay by credit card. We pay, we make payments online. because there are like these online devices everywhere

and I carry cards with me and it's just better than what did you say like something double you? Oh it's better than having a wad of cash a wad of cash is just like a pile or a stack of cash that you have folded and put in your pocket I have not done that in years and years and years you just use a card and it's all okay

yeah like a ward of banknotes like a pack of notes, you know, like in films when they sell something, then they have this, you know, a word of notes. When I was younger, I used to use a lot of cash. So definitely yes. Again, a short answer, dear listener, it's absolutely fine. To first give a very short answer, it's natural is what people do. Native speakers speak like this, you know. Like, did you use cash more when you were a child? Definitely yes. A short answer, and then you say why. And here Rory uses inversion. You said not only was it easier to pay with cash, but it was also da-da-da-da.

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So you can kind of make it a question. Was it easier? But it's not a question. It's inversion. Not only was it easier to pay with cash, but it was also the only acceptable way to pay for things. So when I was a child, it was the only acceptable way.

We didn't have any online payments, so Rory used cash. How many children had bank cards back in those days, though? No, no, no. Not many. Only cash and coins. Yeah, but maybe, dear listener, you are very young now, and maybe you were born with a credit card in your hands, only with online payments,

and you've never seen cash in your hands. your life. Perhaps that's true for you. Really, I just, I used only cash for a very long time. Oh, I'm old, I'm old. But still, there are people who use only cash and they don't, they may not even have any cards, right? And you can use a phrase of verb. Pan out, a very nice phrase of verb, dear listener. It's pretty advanced, because not. no one uses it. So pan out. Like to develop in a particular way, usually successful way. Like, we'll see how things pan out. How things like will develop. The end result. Or for example, like my business didn't pan out. Like it wasn't successful, unfortunately.

You missed something. You missed a band's nine piece of vocabulary. What, what, what, whoa, whoa. Legal tender. What's that? Legal tender means an acceptable form of payment. Like what? We don't understand, Rory. It's too difficult for us. Like using Scottish banknotes in England. Yeah, but like our listener isn't from Scotland, so what do they do? Doesn't make a difference. Legal tender is a way of talking about legitimate ways of paying for something.

Okay, can you use it in a sentence that our listener can use it? Yes, absolutely. You might have gold, but it's not a form of legal tender. Usually shops only accept money or cash. Mm. Okay. Nice. And we make direct bank transfers. So if you don't have any cash, you can just transfer the money. Like at the beginning of the episodes, like Rory didn't have any cash for me. And I said, no, no, no, no, no. You just can make a direct bank transfer online. So just, just, you just can make a direct bank transfer online. So just, just, just. transfer the money to my bank account. So sometimes people make direct bank transfers to other people's accounts. So you need a phone and the internet. That's all. But if you are in a place, in a remote place, a place which is like far away from everywhere and everybody, and if a place doesn't have any

internet connection. It might be a problem and you do need some cash. And there are some places like that where only cash is accepted just because there's no internet. There's no Wi-Fi. Yeah, yeah, there are some places like that. In the mountains. We must help them. Well, come on, in the mountains, in the, I don't know, jungles, on some islands, perhaps. But yeah, very few places are like that. Everyone has the internet these days. Well, most people, I think. Most people. Well, the people listening to this podcast have the internet,

so it's highly likely they will be paying for things the same ways we will be. And about the future and cash, you can say that actually the reverse is more likely. The reverse that I will use less cash in the future. So you can say, like, I think the reverse is more likely. The opposite. The opposite, yeah. But then I said, sure. short of some disaster.

But that means just unless there is some disaster. Yay. So, de Lisna, we're wondering, do you use cash? Like, do you really use coins and notes and stuff? Like, or it's just like your phone? Or do you still carry cards on you? What about you, your life? And I have a joke.

We'll wrap it up with a joke. I wondered if there would be a joke. No. Yeah. So, Rory, I've done some terrible things for money. Oh my, like what? Like getting up early to work. Ha, ha, ha, ha, Rory explains the joke.

Well, doing terrible things for money usually means killing people, but it can also mean... Getting up too early for work. And getting up early is also a bad thing. Thank you very much for listening. We'll get back to you in our next episode. Bye. Bye. How often they use cash?

Not much these days, to be honest. Almost all my payments are contactless. You just tap your card and you're done. Do you often bring cash with you? Well, again, no. I honestly can't remember the last time I paid for anything with coins or notes or anything like that. There's just no need for it nowadays.

Do you always pay by card? Almost always, yes. Like there are chip and pen devices everywhere nowadays. So it's just easier to carry cards with you rather than wads of cash. Or better yet, you can just pay through the contact list on your phone. Did you use cash more when you were younger? Definitely, yes. Not only was it easier to pay with it,

I think it was almost always the only acceptable way to pay for things. I think the only exceptions were in places that didn't accept Scottish notes as legal tender, but that was a rarity and almost, well, it's almost never a problem now. Is it okay not to have any cash on you? I mean, so far it's panned out reasonably well. Even in places that don't use chip and pen, you can almost always make direct bank transfers to their accounts. You just need a phone and an internet connection for that. I suppose if I was somewhere more remote and unconnected to the internet, it might be a problem.

And I'd prepare in advance, but that's yet to happen. Do you think you'll use cash more in the future? No, I think it will actually be the reverse, short of some disaster that stops contactless payments. We all seem to be using money less and less, at least as far as I can tell.