Phrasal verbs: Money !

 Phrasal Verbs related to money 

As you know, native speakers of English tend to use a lot of phrasal verbs (sometimes called prepositional, multi-word verb, verbs) in everyday spoken English. In fact, this is quite frustrating for students who often have learned one-word verbs during their English studies and then are confronted with an English speaking world where people usually favor phrasal verbs in daily discourse. I’d like to focus on a few specific areas in which these phrasal verbs are commonly used. I’m a great believer in learning vocabulary by groups and so this week I’d like to focus on an area of great interest to all of us: MONEY.

Spending Money
lay out	to spend money. especially a large amount
splash out	to spend a lot of money on something you don’t need, but is very pleasant
run up	to create a large debt
fork out, fork over	inf. to pay for something, usually something you would rather not have to pay for.
shell out	inf. to pay for something, usually something you would rather not have to pay for.
cough up	inf. to provide money for something you do no want to
Having Just Enough Money
get by	to have just enough money for your needs
scrape by	to manage to live on very little money
Helping Someone with Money
bail out	to help a person or organization out of a difficult situation
tide over	to help someone with money for a period of time until they have enough
Paying Debts
pay back	to return money owed to someone
pay off	to finish paying all money that is owed
Saving Money
save up	to keep money for a large expense in the future
put aside	to save money for a specific purpose
Using Saved Money
dip into	to spend part of your saved money
break into	to start to use money that you have saved

  

Here is a practice dialogue using some of the above vocabulary.Well, last week I finally dipped into that money that I had been putting aside for the past year and a half. I decided that I should really enjoy myself so I splashed out and had a great meal at Andy’s. Next, I went to Macys on Saturday and laid out $400 for that suit I’d told you about. Of course, I used a great deal of what I had saved up to pay back that bill I had run up on my Visa card. It feels great to finally have some money after all those years of scraping by. Thanks again for tiding me over during that long winter of ‘95. I don’t think I would have got by without your bailing me out… Unfortunately, I also had to cough up about $250 in insurance costs. Oh well, I guess shelling out the cash for those things is just as necessary as anything else. …..

Taken from esl.huide@about .com