Transcript

Hello and welcome to 2-minute English. Brought to you by Better At English dot com.

Today’s word is bubble sitter. It’s a fairly new “slang” word in real estate and economy.

Joe Barker is a bubble sitter. He sold his expensive house just before he retired so that his biggest investment wouldn’t suddenly lose value right before he needed it.

Bubble sitter

Meaning

Bubble sitters are people who think that the bubble is about to burst. They sell off their investments, such as their houses, because they want to get as much money as they can before the prices fall. Another type of bubble sitter is people who wait to invest money in something — or to buy something — because they think that the bubble will burst soon and that the prices will fall again. For example, if you buy a house during the bubble you could lose a lot of money when the bubble bursts and the prices fall again. So you’ve wait. You wait to see what will happen. You wait for prices to fall before you buy. You are a bubble sitter.

So people are bubble sitters. But you can also talk about bubble sitting as an activity or a general economic concept.

Authentic example

Today’s authentic example comes from CNN.

Bubble sitting the pros and cons.

Waiting for home prices to drop before buying a home is tempting. But making the right call isn’t simple. Convinced home prices will fall? So are lot of other Americans. Some, known as bubble sitters, are acting on their conviction. They’re cashing out by selling their homes and renting, figuring they’ll return to the market after prices have fallen. Bubble sitters also include those people who have never owned a home and are waiting to take the plunge, along with folks who are relocating and holding onto their cash until the market in their new hometown softens.

That wraps up this edition of two-minute English. We’ll see you next time, here at Better at English dot com.

Links
Read about economic bubbles on Wikipedia
Lots of articles about bubbles (in the economic sense) are listed here.

Copyright 2008 L. Linstruth - www.betteratenglish.com.

Business English vocabulary: bubble sitter

Transcript

Welcome to 2-minute English! Today’s word is perk.

One of the perks of my job as a salesperson is that I get to travel around the world.

Perk.
Meaning

In business contexts, a perk is an informal advantage or benefit that you get because of your job. In everyday English contexts, a perk is some kind of advantage or benefit in general.

Authentic example

We have two authentic examples for you today. The first is from CNN, from an article describing how a company gives its employees free towels to use in the company gym. The benefit, the perk, is that the employees save time and energy.

As the economy rebounds and the labor market tightens up … companies are once again trying to find new ways to attract and retain talent. And time-saving perks seem to be the answer.

Here is the second authentic example, about perks in everyday English. It’s also from CNN.

Bourbon, Spam and ski weekends are just some of the things you can get free or at discounted prices as long as you’re a shareholder. Shareholder perks are a pleasant, if monetarily insignificant, diversion from the normal headaches of owning most stocks. Unknown to many shareholders, they are sometimes eligible to receive free or discounted goods and services from the companies whose stock they own…While none of [the] perks are good enough reason to buy a company’s stock, they do spice things up a little.

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Look up perk in the dictionary.

See how perk is used.

Business Writing Software – Business English Writing Tool: WhiteSmoke is a unique, all-in-one solution for your business writing and Business English needs – grammar, spelling and punctuation check.

Copyright 2008 L. Linstruth - www.betteratenglish.com.

Business English vocabulary: perk