Chatterbox #346 – The psychology of spending money
5/7/202632 min
Why does paying with cash feel different from tapping your phone? In this Chatterbox episode, Andrew and Anna talk about the psychology of spending money. They share what they happily pay extra for, what they refuse to spend on, and the small tricks companies use to get more money out of our wallets. Along the way, they look at why we sometimes feel like we got a great deal even when we just spent five times what we intended.
Listening to many natural responses is one of the best ways to build your everyday listening skills in English.
The Best Way to Learn with This Episode:
- Culips members get an interactive transcript, helpful study guide, and ad-free audio for this episode. Take your English to the next level by becoming a Culips member. Become a Culips member now: Click here:
- Members can access the ad-free version here: Click here.
- Join our Discord community to connect with other learners and get more English practice. Click here to join.
References:
Dan Ariely TED Talk, Are we in control of our own decisions? — Watch here:
American Psychological Association, The psychology of spending* — Read here:
🔑 Key expressions
Keep an ear out for these phrases during the episode:
- To recoil
- Hit or miss
- To break a bill
- Couldn’t give a toss
- To be averse to
- To game
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsAndrew· Host0:00
Welcome to Chatterbox, the Culips series for intermediate to advanced English learners, where we have natural conversations about all kinds of super fascinating topics, from cultural trends and big news stories to debates, maybe viral moments that we see online, and just everyday things that we don't always stop to think about. I'm Andrew, and today, in just a moment, I'll be joined by my co-host, Anna. I've got a question for you. What's something you're always happy to spend money on no matter what it costs? And on the flip side, what's something you absolutely refuse to pay for, even when it's cheap? If you really start thinking about it, our spending habits are kind of strange. Sometimes we'll happily drop money on things like coffee or movie tickets without thinking twice, and then other times we'll spend an hour on a subway to go to a physical store so that we can buy something in real life instead of having to pay for a shipping fee for online shopping. Well, today, Anna and I, we're gonna get into all of this, and we're gonna talk about the psychology of spending money. We'll chat about the things that we're happy to splurge on and the things that we won't pay for no matter what, and also some of the interesting tricks that companies use to get us to spend more money. We'll get started in just a moment, but before we do,