Shadowing Practice: The Holiday Budget Starts Now - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Do you know how much you're going to spend this holiday season?
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If the answer is no, you're probably already behind.
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Today we're talking about why your holiday budget needs to start right now.
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Remember when Black Friday meant camping outside a store in a folding chair after your Thanksgiving dinner?
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Back then the shopping frenzy lasted a day.
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Now the deals seem to start earlier every year and stick around through the holidays.
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Today we're talking about why your holiday budget needs to start now not
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when the sales begin every year people say the same thing
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i can't believe how much i spend during the holidays
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and it's not surprising more than half of consumers expect to spend over 500 on gifts this year
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while one in three shoppers anticipate spending more than a thousand overall my name is jenny
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and i'm caitlin the holidays might still feel like they're months away
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but now is the best time to start your planning and holiday spending isn't just gifts anymore.
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It's the travel, decorations, entertainment, holiday outfits, and the little purchases that seem harmless but add up.
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Today we're sharing practical ways to help you prepare now to reduce the financial stress that can come with the holiday season.
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So Caitlin, why should your holiday preparation start earlier than you think?
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I always run into the same problem year after year.
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If I don't start planning earlier, then next thing I know it's Thanksgiving and then it's Christmas Eve and then Christmas is here and then it's New Year's.
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And in the midst of all that time, I have overspent and bought way too many last minute gifts.
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So the earlier if I can start planning, the better I can plan things out and make those lists of the people
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that I want to buy for and make sure that I am spending accordingly.
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So Black Friday is dubbed as the start of holiday shopping.
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And a lot of people wait until Black Friday to do holiday shopping.
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But in the past, how has that actually made you overspend?
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Yeah, so Black Friday, love a good sale
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but there's a lot of sales on a lot of things now especially with black friday
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and so now i see something that's on sale
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and i think oh i'm getting a good deal i can go ahead
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and buy this and i'm actually saving money when in fact
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that person may not actually really wanted that gift
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and i'm just buying the things to buy them
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and black friday operates off a sense of urgency the sales
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of you have to get this now it's a limited time deal and anytime not just the holidays.
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But anytime we are shopping under pressure, you make bad decisions.
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It's that fear of missing out.
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If I don't get this now, am I going to miss out on this deal?
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What if it's not there tomorrow?
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The thing about Christmas, the thing about Thanksgiving, all these holidays that happen at the end of the year, they're the same time every year.
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Every year.
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You know they're coming.
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So waiting until two months before, you're really setting yourself up for failure because who can save the amount of money you need in two months.
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Get the presents, get the travel.
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I have family that's far away.
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And I just don't have the budget to support that in 30 days.
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And so when a lot of people are unprepared with their budget, what do they do?
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Pull out the credit card.
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Pull out the credit card.
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And so what happens is this holiday time
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that was supposed to be full of joy and wonder
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and magic now is stretching into the next year with you paying it off.
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And that actually hinders you from then preparing for the next year.
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So it's like an unending cycle of going into debt, paying it off just to go into debt the following year.
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So my personal belief is that holiday budgeting is something that should happen all year round, no matter how small of an amount.
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If you can set that aside starting in January, come December, you'll say, oh, this is a gift for me.
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Now I can pay for something and I don't have to go into debt for it.
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Yeah.
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And another good way to do that is if you're buying intentionally for people as you're out shopping throughout the year, you've already set aside your budget already for your expenses,
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you see something that's going to be meaningful to that person, you can buy it now.
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You don't just have to buy holiday gifts during the holiday season.
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I have a gift closet and I shop sales.
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I thrift a lot.
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I am in places that have clearance deals all the time.
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And so if I see something that's going to be perfect for someone like, oh, my mom really wants a scarf that's this brand, or my brother has been talking about this thing, I'll go ahead and get it,
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stick it in the gift closet.
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And then usually around Halloween time, I'll get everything out of the gift closet and start making piles
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because the worst thing you can do is double spend on someone and forget that you got them a present.
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So I'd take everything out, start making piles, label them with post -it notes, and then you can make your actual list of like, okay, I'm still missing something for this person.
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I still need to get something for this person.
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So for me, the gift closet has really saved me from overspending.
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So Caitlin, we know you need to have a holiday spending budget.
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How do you calculate what goes into that spending budget?
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So there's the obvious ones, right?
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There's the gifts for significant others, gifts for family, gifts for co -workers, kids, those types of things.
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But what goes beyond the gifts?
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There is food, there is potentially travel, there are other expenses, like even your electric bill.
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If you're the one that's hosting and doing the cooking, your electric bill is going to be more expensive.
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So there's things
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that you're going to want to take a look at to kind of fluff up your budget to make sure
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that you have enough for everything that's considered
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absolutely i didn't even think of the electrical thing
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if you're someone who goes all out for decorations
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and you leave those lights on 24 hours a day your electrical bill is going to be higher
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and i didn't even think to put that in the budget
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but an easy way to figure
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that out is something i do a lot is go into your online banking
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and you can usually sort by date or time period
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so sort by date look at last year look at what you spent realistically
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and that's going to encapsulate not only the gifts that you bought
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but it's also going to every time you went out to eat every gift
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that you bought on the fly things that maybe you weren't planning on doing
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so that will help encapsulate everything for you
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that gives you a real honest look at what your budget actually needs to be
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and i'm going to go out and guess
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that it's going to be a lot higher than you think it is 100
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because you're probably only thinking of gifts
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and what about those matching family pajamas did you think about
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those did you think about the photo session did you think
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about 50 here an extra 25 there they happen bit by bit
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and you they don't add up in your head
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so looking at what you spent last year an honest look
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and if that number scares you there's two things you can do one build your budget around
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that number and make those sacrifices is where you need to
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or two look at how you can reduce
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that number maybe you don't need to get gifts for every
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single person in your family maybe you can look at where you travel look at what you bought
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so really there's um an easy way to do it
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and it all starts with knowing where you stand in reality not just in your mind
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so now that we know the number
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and we've decided on what our holiday budget's going to be how do we get there
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so there's a couple different ways one of the easiest ways is to start setting up automatic transfers early.
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Whatever your budget is, you can divide that number by 10.
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That way you give yourself some leeway and set up
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that automatic transfer for every month that money to be put in from your checking to a savings account.
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If you're somebody that's tempted to go into your savings account, maybe before you need to, go ahead and hide that savings account on your online or mobile banking.
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That way that account is hidden, it's set aside, and now you're not as tempted to touch it because you can't see it.
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Another tip that is a weird psychology trick, I guess, is naming your account can make you more committed to that account.
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So if it's just random savings account, maybe you're like, oh, but that's for savings.
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But if it's super fun time family Christmas account, and then you have to withdraw from your super fun time family Christmas account, you might think twice about doing that.
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You might think twice.
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And you're more committed to saving toward that goal.
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Another tip and another reason to prep for the holidays all year round, is that you don't want to get caught up in the frenzy, the pressure, the sales.
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Whenever people feel pressured and rushed, they make worse financial decisions.
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So you want to give yourself time, give yourself a lot of planning, shop all year round.
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Don't let yourself get too bought into the frenzy, into the holiday sales.
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All of that is just designed to make you spend more.
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Before we wrap up, take out your phone.
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We all know our budget now after going in calculating our true expenses
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so let's open the fairwinds app and set up an automatic transfer even
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if you just start with 25 a week that's progress
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and remember you can always increase the amount as the holidays
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get closer the goal isn't to create the perfect holiday budget overnight the goal is to start early
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so you can enjoy the season without the financial stress
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that often comes with it thanks for joining us today if you found this episode helpful be sure to like comment subscribe, and share it with someone who's already thinking about holiday shopping.
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We'll see you next time!
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B1 speaking lesson is built on the video “The Holiday Budget Starts Now”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: holiday, gift, budget, account, sale. This video has 134 sentences and 1798 words to shadow. The speech runs for 8:33. The speaker talks fast, about 210 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 89% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| closet noun | /ˈklɑzɪt/ | A small room within a house used to store clothing, food, or other household supplies. |
| frenzy noun | /ˈfɹɛnzi/ | A state of wild activity or panic. |
| overspend noun | The amount by which someone or something is overspent. | |
| expense noun | /ɪkˈspɛns/ | A spending or consuming, often a disbursement of funds. |
| encapsulate verb | /ɪnˈkæps(j)ʊˌleɪt/ | To enclose something in, or as if in, a capsule. |
| tempt verb | /tɛmpt/ | To provoke someone to do wrong, especially by promising a reward; to entice. |
| decoration noun | /ˌdɛkəˈɹeɪʃən/ | The act of adorning, embellishing, or honoring; ornamentation. |
| calculate verb | /ˈkælkjʊleɪt/ | To determine the value of something or the solution to something by a mathematical process. |
| distress noun | /dɪˈstɹɛs/ | Physical or emotional discomfort, suffering, or alarm, particularly of a more acute nature. |
| pile noun | /paɪl/ | A mass of things heaped together; a heap. |
| anytime adverb | At any time. | |
| hinder verb | /ˈhɪndɚ/ | To make difficult to accomplish; to act as an obstacle; to frustrate. |
| leeway noun | [ˈliːˌweɪ] | The drift of a ship or aeroplane in a leeward direction. |
| pajamas noun | /pəˈd͡ʒɑ.məz/ | Clothes for wearing to bed and sleeping in, usually consisting of a loose-fitting shirt and pants/trousers. |
| preposition noun | /ˌpɹɛpəˈzɪʃən/ | Any of a class of non-inflecting words and multiword terms typically employed to connect a following noun or a pronoun, in an adjectival or adverbial sense… |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| go ahead verb | /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ | To proceed with; to begin. |
| set up verb | /ˌsɛt ˈʌp/ | To make ready for use. |
| pull out verb | To withdraw; especially of military forces; to retreat. | |
| set aside verb | /sɛt.əˈsaɪd/ | To separate and reserve something for a specific purpose. |
| add up verb | To take the sum of; to total. | |
| go out verb | To leave, especially a building. | |
| miss out verb | To miss an experience or lose an opportunity, etc. that should not be missed. | |
| stick around verb | To stay; to linger; to remain. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Do you know how much you're going to spend this holiday season?
- If the answer is no, you're probably already behind.
- What if it's not there tomorrow?
- I have family that's far away.
- How do you calculate what goes into that spending budget?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is dubbed · are unprepared · be put |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | you've already set · has really saved · we've decided |
| Verb + -ing enjoy, keep, stop… + -ing — verbs that are followed by the -ing form | start planning · start making · start setting |
| Possibility with “might / may” might/may + verb — something that is possible but not certain | might still feel · may not actually really · might think |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 48 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: thrift /ˈθɹɪft/, withdraw /wɪðˈdɹɔ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: decoration /ˌdɛkəˈɹeɪʃən/, preposition /ˌpɹɛpəˈzɪʃən/, shopper /ˈʃɑ.pɚ/, intentionally /ɪnˈtɛn(t)ʃənəli/, preparation /ˌpɹɛpəˈɹeɪʃ(ə)n/
- Long words — get the stress right: encapsulate /ɪnˈkæps(j)ʊˌleɪt/, decoration /ˌdɛkəˈɹeɪʃən/, preposition /ˌpɹɛpəˈzɪʃən/, anticipate /ænˈtɪs.ɪ.peɪt/, intentionally /ɪnˈtɛn(t)ʃənəli/
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 closet, frenzy, overspend.
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.