Shadowing Practice: Do This EVERY Time You Get Paid (Paycheck Routine) - Learn English Speaking with Video

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It's Friday, just got paid.

New shoes, new restaurant, movies, and it's gone.

When it comes to payday, it's hard to know the best things to do with your money.

So today I'm going through step -by -step the eight things

you need to do with your money as soon as you get paid.

The first and most important thing you need to do is find your financial baseline.

When it comes to personal finance, most people feel like it's too much work, but that's why most people struggle.

64 % of Americans live paycheck to paycheck because they commit one of the worst financial mistakes.

In psychology, they call it mental accounting.

Basically, it's when you mentally categorize your money instead of physically writing it down.

In May, you might receive a tax refund from the IRS and you mentally categorize this as extra fun money.

You get excited and start spending it.

A new PS5, a new TV, or Mr. Magic Lamp.

The problem is, this money is the same as your regular income.

You just pay too much in taxes and the IRS is just returning it.

The good news is the solution is simple.

Open up a spreadsheet and take account of all your monthly expenses.

Rent, internet, pineapple pizza, floss.

So putting all this together in a Google Sheet was a great way for me to discover how much

I needed to survive every month with my current lifestyle.

I'm self -employed so my income varies widely and this is just a great number to know.

Alright, now for the real work.

Delete the expense items that aren't your core essentials.

Yeah, that means Netflix, staplers, your Candy Crush subscription, and then sign up for my free weekly newsletter,

Rethinkable, to build a wealthier and healthier life, link below.

After a grueling self -reflection moment, you should end up with just a few core expenses.

First, housing, which could be rent or mortgage.

Generally, you want this to be under 30 % of your income.

Second, groceries and food, about 10 % of your income.

Third, insurance and utilities, like internet, cell phone, and electricity, about 10%.

This number now becomes your financial baseline, the absolute bare minimum you need to survive each month.

Aim to keep your financial baseline under 50 % of your total income.

If it's over, look for expenses that you can easily swap for cheaper ones.

Do you really need that apartment with an indoor pool, a phone plan that has satellite coverage, or free -range organic pasture -raised avocados?

Knowing your financial baseline builds the foundation for the next step.

What would it feel like to have saved up to six months worth of expenses in your bank account at all times?

Imagine the kind of freedom and peace of mind you'd have knowing that if you ever got sick,

lost your job, or get injured, you'd be completely fine.

This is why having an emergency fund is crucial.

Mathematicians explained why with the Murphy's Law.

Basically, everything that can go wrong will go wrong.

Instead of asking your parents for money again, or pulling out your credit card going further into debt, you'll have something to fall back on.

A study found that as much as 56 % of Americans can't afford an unexpected $1 ,000 expense,

and 22 % don't have an emergency fund at all.

I remember when I got into a car accident when I was 20 that cost me about $5 ,000 to fix.

If I didn't have an emergency fund saved up, I might have needed to take out a loan and paying back

that loan with interest would have easily cost more than $7 ,000.

Generally, you want your emergency fund to cover six months of your financial baseline.

If your baseline is $3 ,000 a month, you need to save $18 ,000 for emergencies.

Emergencies don't include a wild night out, vacations, or pineapple pizza cravings.

The money should only be used when all hell breaks loose,

when your house floods, when you get stranded in the middle of nowhere and have no other options.

Basically, when your life is FUBAR, that's when you use your emergency fund.

Once you fill your emergency fund immediately moves to the next step.

77 % of American adults are in debt, and this is something that we've just all accepted as the norm.

Maybe we bought luxury clothes we didn't need to keep up a lifestyle we couldn't afford, or purchased new furniture when we could've used Craigslist.

One of the worst things with debt is that it strangles your monthly income.

When you're paying hundreds of dollars or more for your credit cards, your car loans, it quickly eats up the amount you can save and invest.

So forget about cutting back on avocado toast and iced coffee, because paying off your high interest debt will save you thousands in interest and fees.

If you have a credit card balance of $6 ,500 with an interest rate of 19 .5%,

and you decide to only pay the minimum payment of $130 per month, it's going to take you eight years.

Eight years to pay it all off with an additional $6 ,000 in interest.

So what's the best strategy to pay off your high interest debt early?

There are two ways to do this.

You could tackle the high interest rate loans first.

Credit cards, payday loans, car loans, stuff with an interest rate of 10 % or more.

Pay off the highest interest rate first and then move on to the next loan.

This is called the avalanche method, and mathematically speaking, is the cheapest and most efficient way to pay off your loans.

Another option is called the snowball method.

Although it is less efficient, it takes a more psychological approach.

Instead of focusing on the interest rates, you tackle the smallest loan amount first.

You'll be able to pay these off quicker, which builds momentum and motivates you to keep going.

For me, when I first got serious about personal finance and paying off my debt, I consolidated everything into a Google spreadsheet.

It contained each debt, the amount I owed, and their interest rate.

Every time I made a payment, I would open up the spreadsheet and manually adjust the remaining amount.

Every other day, I would visualize paying off the debt until everything went to zero, and this motivated me to keep pushing.

After you pay off your high interest debt, you'll have a bit more wiggle room with your monthly income.

But before you do anything, you need to prioritize the next step.

When it comes to investing, most people think of flashing screens, day trading, and aggressive screaming.

But apart from what you've seen on Wolf of Wall Street, investing doesn't need to be hard or overwhelming.

The basics are easy, and once you're familiar with them, you could make millions in your lifetime.

Einstein once said, Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world.

He who understands it, earns it.

He who doesn't, pays it.

Compound interest is the reason that you should have started investing yesterday.

Over time, the stock market returns about 10 % a year, meaning your money will essentially double every 10 years without you needing to do anything.

If you invest $6 ,000 each year from 25 to 65 years old with an annual return of 10%,

you'll end up with a total of over $2 .7 million.

If you choose not to invest and instead you just keep that money under your mattress,

you're going to end up with a total of $240 ,000.

That difference is huge and that can easily change your life.

You can get my free investing starter kit to learn the basics of stock investing to easily and confidently start investing today.

Link below.

The problem is, which investing account should you invest with first?

Taxable brokerage, 401k, IRA, HSA.

Knowing which to prioritize will maximize your returns and minimize your taxes.

For most people, you should first put money into your 401k account, a workplace retirement plan that offers matching contributions.

Essentially, free money.

If your 401k plan offers this match, contribute enough to meet the matching amounts.

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When it comes to your 401k, not only can you get free money, you can also lower your taxable income.

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If you earn $90 ,000 a year and your employer matches up to 3 % of your salary,

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that means they'll give you $2 ,700 of free money.

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If you contribute 10 % of your 90k income to your 401k plan,

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when tax season comes, you'll only pay taxes on $80 ,000 instead of your 90K salary.

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After you max out your employer match with your 401k, contribute to a Roth IRA account.

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Unlike the 401k where contributions are pre -tax, with a Roth IRA, contributions are post -tax,

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which means you'll first pay taxes on your $90 ,000 salary before you can add it to your Roth IRA.

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The advantage of a Roth IRA is that you don't have to pay taxes on any of the earnings in this account,

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and you can withdraw your contributions at any time.

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So even though you're contributing money into a retirement account, you can withdraw money from the principal whenever you want.

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After taking advantage of your retirement accounts, it's time to invest with a regular taxable brokerage.

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Unlike the 401k and Roth IRA, there aren't any obvious tax advantages, but it is one of the next best places to invest your excess money.

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For me personally, I've been investing with Moomoo for years.

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And for a limited time, if you create an account with my link below and meet the deposit requirements,

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you can get up to 16 stocks for free.

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With all my investment accounts, I primarily invest in low -cost mutual funds for the long term.

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When you invest for the long term, you're not checking your account every day, week, or month.

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You're putting your money in, you're making sure you have everything set, and then you're checking it maybe twice a year.

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But you're not stressing out every time the stock market's having a panic attack.

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The problem is, most people just can't stomach the ups and downs the market takes, and over the past year,

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things have been looking a bit dicey.

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Normally, this is when people make one of the worst financial mistakes.

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In finance, they call this timing the market.

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Basically, it's when the market isn't doing too hot, so you decide to stop investing or pull all your money out

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and wait on the sidelines to get back in the right time.

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There's two problems with this.

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First, you don't know if the stock market is going to go lower or higher because no one knows.

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Just like how economists have predicted 30 out of the last three market crashes.

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Second, even if you pull out at a really fantastic time when the stock market was really high and then it crashes,

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you need to be right a second time to put it back in at the right time.

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The best solution based on hard data and math is to simply invest a fixed amount every month consistently.

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Doesn't matter whether it's going up, doesn't matter if it's going down.

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Let's say you invest $200 into Apple stock every single month for five years.

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If you're investing a fixed amount of money each time you buy,

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you'll get more shares when the stock price is lower and fewer when the stock price is higher.

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Over time, this will minimize the cost per share you pay for your stock.

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So if you have $300 to invest and you're looking at a very volatile stock called Magic Lab Company,

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in the first month it's $10 per share.

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In the second month it's $5.

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In the third month it's $20.

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Here's where dollar cost averaging comes in.

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Say you want to invest $100 a month for three months.

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So at the end of three months, you would have bought 10 shares in the first month, 20 shares in the second month,

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and then five shares in the third month.

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So now you have 35 shares for $300 for an average price per share of $8 .57.

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Your price per share isn't the cheapest at $5 per share, assuming you could tell the future and bought everything in the second month,

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but it's also not the most expensive at $20 per share if you bought everything in the third month.

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After you're invested, move on to the next step.

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When it comes to life, time is the most valuable resource.

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It's the only thing we can't buy more of.

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At the end of the day,

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it doesn't matter how much money you have or save if you don't actually have the time to enjoy your life.

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In economics, they call it opportunity cost.

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Basically, the time you spend doing something is time not spent on doing something else.

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On Sunday, you might spend three hours washing the floors, wiping the windows, throwing out the trash,

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but what if you spent those three hours working on a side hustle?

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If you can make $90 in three hours and you can hire someone to clean your house for $30,

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then your time might be better spent on the side hustle.

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Over time, you can use the difference to invest, grow your money, and buy even more time back to do more of the things you love.

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Write down tasks that you absolutely hate to do.

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Cleaning the toilet, mowing the lawn, or driving 40 minutes to get groceries.

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Write down how much time it takes you to do each task.

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How much money you could be making if instead of doing this task, you were just working on your side hustle.

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Then look into how much it costs to hire someone else to do the task.

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So putting all this together was helpful to see

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if it made more financial sense to hire someone to do something or to keep doing it myself.

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But the most important step of all is this.

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I remember for a long time, I did everything manually.

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Paying my bills, saving for a house, investing.

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The problem is this takes dedicated time and brainpower every week.

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In psychology, they call it decision fatigue.

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Basically, when you make a lot of decisions during your day, the quality of each new decision decreases over time.

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In the morning, you might be able to make really great choices one after another.

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But later that evening, when you get closer to 10 ,000 decisions, you might make mistakes that you later regret.

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Buying a pair of AirPod Max, Mr. Magic Lamp, or this overpriced stapler.

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But what if I told you that you can easily automate your finances so you never need to think about it again?

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When it comes to setting up guideline automation, it's going to save you so much time and headache in the long run.

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Nowadays, I don't have to think twice about whether I paid my bills, if I invested this week.

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I don't need to track anything because I know it's already done.

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Here's how to do it.

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First, make sure your paychecks are automatically deposited into your checking account.

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Then, with your bank, set up automatic transfers to move your paycheck into the first of two new accounts, your spending account and your savings account.

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Your spending account includes fixed monthly bills and essential expenses like groceries, gas, and pineapple pizza.

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By knowing how much you'd normally spend in a month, set spending targets for non -essentials like restaurants, movies, and Uniqlo.

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Then set up automatic transfers at the end of the month to move what's left over into your second account, savings.

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From here, the money and savings should flow into whichever step you're at saving for an emergency fund,

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paying off high interest debt, investing, or opportunity costs.

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And that leads me to something that you've got to start accepting.

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And it's that even if you're doing all these steps, sometimes you still might not feel like you're not doing a good job financially.

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And that might be because you don't know these 14 subtle signs.

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Click here to find out if you're financially doing better than you think.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Do This EVERY Time You Get Paid”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: month, account, interest, invest, investing. This video has 191 sentences and 2665 words to shadow. The speech runs for 14:02. The speaker talks fast, about 190 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
invest verb	/ɪnˈvɛst/	To spend money, time, or energy on something, especially for some benefit or purpose; used with in.
expense noun	/ɪkˈspɛns/	A spending or consuming, often a disbursement of funds.
baseline noun	/ˈbeɪslaɪn/	A line that is a base for measurement or for construction.
contribute verb	/kənˈtɹɪb.jut/	To give something that is or becomes part of a larger whole.
contribution noun	/ˌkɑntɹɪˈbjuʃən/	Something given or offered that adds to a larger whole.
pizza noun	/ˈpi.tsə/	A baked Italian dish of a thinly rolled bread crust typically topped before baking with tomato sauce, cheese, and other ingredients such as meat or vegetables.
hire verb	/ˈhaɪɹ/	To obtain the services of in return for fixed payment.
salary noun	/ˈsæləɹi/	A fixed amount of money paid to a worker, usually calculated on a monthly or annual basis, not hourly, as wages. Implies a degree of professionalism and/or…
hustle verb	/ˈhʌsəl/	To push someone roughly; to crowd; to jostle.
groceries noun	/ˈɡɹoʊ.s(ə.)ɹiz/	Retail foodstuffs and other household supplies; the commodities sold by a grocer or in a grocery store.
pineapple noun	/ˈpaɪnəpəl/	A tropical plant, Ananas comosus, native to South America, having thirty or more long, spined and pointed leaves surrounding a thick stem.
earn verb	/ɝn/	To gain (success, reward, recognition) through applied effort or work.
efficient adjective	/ɪˈfɪʃənt/	Making good, thorough, or careful use of resources; not consuming extra. Especially, making good use of time or energy.
essentially adverb	/ɪˈsɛnʃəli/	In essence: by nature.
automatic adjective	/ˌɔː.təˈmæt.ɪk/	Capable of operating without external control or intervention.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
pay off verb		To bribe, especially to deter oversight.
set up verb	/ˌsɛt ˈʌp/	To make ready for use.
open up verb		To open.
write down verb		To produce or set (something) down in writing; to record something.
eat up verb		To consume completely.
fall back on verb		To turn to as a substitute; to rely on as a backup.
find out verb		To discover, as by asking or investigating.
get up to verb		To do something, especially something that is forbidden or improper.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

Delete the expense items that aren't your core essentials.
The problem is, which investing account should you invest with first?
After you're invested, move on to the next step.
It's the only thing we can't buy more of.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on	I've been investing · have been looking
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is called · are automatically deposited
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	you've seen · have predicted

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 57 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, you'll. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: withdraw /wɪðˈdɹɔ/, wealthy /ˈwɛl.θi/, eighth /eɪtθ/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, mathematician /ˌmæθ.(ə.)məˈtɪʃ.ən/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: contribution /ˌkɑntɹɪˈbjuʃən/, efficient /ɪˈfɪʃənt/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, wash /wɑʃ/, flash /flæʃ/
Long words — get the stress right: contribution /ˌkɑntɹɪˈbjuʃən/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, automatic /ˌɔː.təˈmæt.ɪk/, psychology /saɪˈkɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, manually /ˈmænj(u)əliː/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like invest, expense, baseline.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Do This EVERY Time You Get Paid (Paycheck Routine) - Learn English Speaking with Video

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