IELTS Speaking for Success - 💸 Paying bills (S09E15) + Transcript

Episode Date: August 20, 2023

What kind of bills do you have to pay? How do you usually pay your bills, in cash or by another method? Have you ever forgotten to pay a bill? Is there anything you could do to make your bills cheaper? Tune in and have a great day! - Book a class with Rory here: https://successwithielts.com/rory Get exclusive episodes on IELTS Speaking parts 1, 2, and 3: https://linktr.ee/sfspremium Our course on Phrasal Verbs: https://successwithielts.com/podcourses Transcript: https://successwithielts.com/s09e15 Our IELTS Writing course: https://linktr.ee/wfspremium Find an IELTS Speaking Partner: https://links.successwithielts.com/ieltspartner Our social media: https://linktr.ee/successwithielts © 2023 Success with IELTS Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, lovely, I'm Maria. And my name is Rory, and we're the host 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 started this podcast to give you joy, happiness, gorgeous language, vocabulary grammar for your high IELS school. Rory, are you okay? You don't look very happy. I've just seen my phone bill.

If you had to pay that much, you wouldn't be happy either. Oh, shall we talk about bills? What a topic. Let's give you some juicy vocabulary and grammar about this one. Okay? Let's talk about paying bills. What kind of bills do you have to pay? I don't pay many, really.

I think my most regular ones would be the phone bill and my internet bill. I'm trying to think what else. Oh, the electrical bill. Those are the ones where I see the money coming out of. my account regularly. How do you usually pay your bills? In cash or buy another method? They're all by direct debit, actually.

But the exception of the gym membership, which, I mean, the last time I paid for that, it was in cash, and that was just because I had some cash on me, and it saved time instead of faffing around with a card. Have you ever forgotten to pay a bill? Oh, wow. I probably shouldn't share this too freely,

because I might get in trouble, but I haven't paid to pay. by gym membership for the last three weeks because they haven't asked me. But I've justified it because I already paid for it before and they haven't improved anything in the gym despite bringing up the price of the membership. So that's how I make myself feel better about not paying for it. I kind of accidentally on purpose forgot to pay it. Is there anything you could do to make your bills cheaper?

other than just not paying them I sometimes shop around for new phone providers this is not very often because I have my contract for a standard two year period but when that time is up I shop around for different providers and sometimes

if you make that clear what you're doing then they reduce the bill and sometimes the company that you're already with to thank you for your loyalty will also bring down the price but those are the two things I can imagine right now or I can think of right now. I don't really know any other ways to reduce your bills. Thank you, Rory, for your honest answers.

Too honest. Dear listener, we have our useful premium episodes for you where Rory and I are discussing Speaking Part 2 and 3. This week on our premium, Rory is talking about a complaint he made and was satisfied with the result. And in speaking part 3, we are discussing complaining. in general, these are fresh IELD speaking topics. The links are in the description. Do check them out, okay? So, de listeners, paying bills, we took this topic from IELTS Cambridge Tests book,

one of the official books, and it's not a current, recent, AILD speaking topic, but it was in the book, in the official book from Cambridge, and we thought like, oh, wow, why not, you know, it's an interesting topic, and we've never had it, so you're welcome. I'm not terribly happy about it because I'm about to get in big trouble for not being my gym membership. Aye, aye, aye, Roy, boy. So, a bill.

We talk about an electricity gas phone bill. So something you pay, usually you pay for them, right? So you pay on a monthly yearly basis. For example, they send us a bill for, electricity or for the internet. But also in the restaurant, dear listener, you say, oh, excuse me, can I have the bill, please? So the bill, you pay the bill. Wait for the joke.

Okay, the joke is coming. It's a good one. People are getting a lot out of this episode. So far we've had confessions of criminal offenses taking place. Details about bills. Vocabulary is coming. And then Maria's joke. So lots to look forward to.

So we pay our bills. And Roy told us I pay my most regular bills. So regular bills. Roy pays every month. So phone, the internet bill, electrical bill. It can be the electricity bill too. Electricity bills, yeah. But what about utilities?

Can I say utility bill? That is such good phrase. I would say pay the utilities. Or pay a utility bill. Pay the utilities. Utilities or services like electricity, gas. So pay the utilities. Or utility bills also is possible. Like we pay five thousand dollars every month plus the utilities, the electricity gas. We pays five thousand dollars every month, but for?

For example. And you pay monthly, so every month, right? You can also talk about your subscriptions. Do you have a Netflix subscription? Yeah. Or, you. you pay, for example, for our premium. We have our premium episodes, and maybe you are one of our premium listeners who pays on a monthly or yearly every year basis for our premium. Or, for example, if I have a mortgage, I took out a loan for a house, so every month, what do I do, I do, Rory, I pay for. You pay it monthly?

Monthly, yeah. I pay for my mortgage, right? You can pay your bills in cash. in cash or what? By direct debit. You can pay them by credit card or by cash. A direct debit is a monthly or it's a regular payment that you set up on your account. So you set it up and then every month it just goes automatically.

It just goes automatically. So they are all paid by direct debit. Debit or they debit your card. Debit, they take things away. debit is like a D, like meh. Unless you're the gym that I go to, in which case I get it for free. Rory has used a very good phrase of a fath about. But if you're faffing about, then it's nothing really terribly exciting.

You just have the card and you put it in the right place and then sometimes they ask you to change it and you have to find it and then put it back. It's just faffaffaffing around. Whereas with money, you just take the money and give and done. sometimes we can forget to pay our bills and Rory Accidentally on purpose forgot to pay for my gym membership

Accidentally on purpose Accidentally is like oops accident But on purpose kind of you You like do it on purpose At first I forgot And then I just continued to forget So I got three weeks for free So my gym membership

For example you can say I didn't pay for my gym membership or for some subscription, they brought up the prices, so they raised the prices, they brought up or put up the prices, so I didn't pay. I would like to point out, though, that despite the fact my local gym

has brought up the prices for its memberships, they haven't actually improved any of the equipment in the gym or raised the salaries of the people working there. So, perhaps if they would like me to pay, they should provide some reason to do this. When you forget to pay a bill, you usually get a note. So you receive a notice, like a letter, that warning, you have to pay this.

So get a notice. You can also say that, oh, once I got a notice to pay my electricity bill. Sometimes you have to pay a fine. Like you forgot to pay and then you have to pay a fine. You pay the bill plus this sum of money that's like a fine. I'm going to have to pay a fine now. You can also use the phrase, I was broke. Once I was broke, I didn't have any money.

and I forgot to pay my bills. Well, if you're broke, you're not able to pay your bills. Has that ever happened to you? No. It's not nice being broke. Somebody else pays the bills. Some. Oh, good. It's always great when someone's there to pay your bills.

My bills take care of themselves. Okay? Yeah. Dear listener, you can crack a joke here. Oh my gosh. This is this ideal moment when you, dear listener, in the exam can make a joke. So the examiner asks you,

have you ever forgotten to pay a bill? And then you say, once I didn't pay my electricity bill. That was the darkest time of my life. And then you fail your exam. Did you get it? I didn't pay my electricity bill, so the light, the light, I didn't have any light.

That was the darkest time of my life. No light, it was dark. But also dark times. Like I was sad, I was depressed. I was experiencing some dark times. Sort of like right now with me, I'm experiencing a very dark time because of that joke. So I didn't, once I didn't pay my electricity bill. And those were pretty dark times.

It's so dark. Look how dark it's getting. And then you look at the exam and like, ah, I clicked a joke. Did you like that? So dark. Yes, of course you can't do that. You can't do that. Roy, tell us what overdraft payments, to give some technical specific language, overdraft payments.

Well, that might mean something different in different countries. For me, an overdraft payment is you can take out more money than you have in your account, but you have to pay it back. And this extra amount of money is called an overdraft. But the interest rate is very high on it, and you have to pay it back very quickly. otherwise they start charging you lots and lots of money. What sentence can we say in context of this debt, debts, bills? God, one time I forgot to pay my overdraft

and I had to pay a massive chunk of interest on top of it. Interest is like percent that the bank charges. I have never done that because I've never had an overdraft, but I've never been in debt in my entire life. Thank God. Be in debt. Okay. not deb, in debt, when you owe money.

You take money from the bank and then you have a debt. We can have high bills, so we pay a lot of money, high bills. How can we make them cheaper? Well, not pay them. Don't pay them. What phrase of verb did you use? No phrase the verb did I use. Shop around.

What does that be? If you pay a lot for your internet, you can shop around and choose a new provider. Not this one, but shop around. Okay, okay, this one, right? So maybe this could make the bill cheaper. So shop around for a new provider. And you can say, like, the biggest expense is the internet. Or my biggest expense expense what I pay money for.

I spend money on electricity. My biggest expense is electricity. Roy, what's your biggest expense so far now? Well, the gym membership is probably my biggest regular expense. although having just established I don't pay it, then it should be something else. I try to think. I think it might be the gym membership. It's like 50 pounds a month.

And when I started, it used to be 30. Or maybe I can change the internet services or I can reduce the amount of electricity I use or gas. I know water, water bills. Or you can also say, I can split the bill. For example, if you live with somebody, so we can split the bill. split the bills you pay one part and the other person pays the rest

split the bell okay are you ready for the joke I am not ready for the joke okay okay Roy I need you now you're gonna tolerate the joke no no no give us the introduction okay so Rory tell me in a restaurant what do you call this

document with many dishes you choose the menu yes very good how do you pronounce it Man you. How do you spell it? M-E-N-U. At the restaurant, the woman says, it's the guy's job to pay the bill at the restaurant.

That's why it's called man-you. The man said, no, no, no, no, no, no, we both pay because it's called me and you. It's a good one. It's a good one. Do listen, did you get it? Man you, man-you. Like the woman says, it's like, man-you-you-pay.

But the man says, no, no, no, it's me and you. The links to our courses and classes are in the description below, in the event you haven't died from the cringe that that might have induced. Thank you very much for listening. Bye. Bye. What kind of bills do you have to pay? I don't pay many, really.

I think my most regular ones would be the phone bill and my internet bill. trying to think what else. Oh, the electrical bill. Those are the ones where I see the money coming out of my account regularly. How do you usually pay your bills? In cash or buy another method? They're all by direct debit, actually, but the exception of the gym membership, which, I mean, the last time I paid for that, it was in cash, and that was just because I had some cash on me, and it saved time instead of faffing around with a card. Have you ever forgotten to pay a bill? Well, wow, I probably shouldn't share this too freely because I might get in trouble, but I haven't paid my gym membership for the last three weeks because they haven't asked me. But I've justified it because I already paid for it before and they haven't improved anything in the gym despite bringing up the price of the membership.

So that's how I make myself feel better about not paying for it. I kind of accidentally on purpose forgot to pay it. Is there anything you could do to make your bills cheaper? Other than just not paying them, I sometimes shop around for new phone providers. This is not very often because, you know, I have my contract for like a standard two-year period. But when that time is up, I shop around for different providers. And sometimes if you make that clear what you're doing, then they reduce the bill. and sometimes the company that you're already with to thank you for your loyalty will also bring down the price.

But those are the two things I can imagine right now, or I can think of right now. I don't really know any other ways to reduce your bills.