Numbers dressed up in fancy suits pretending to be words.
The theoretical money trapped inside your walls that everyone talks about but you can never actually touch without borrowing against it. It's like Monopoly money that your house keeps score with.
A company's profit divided by the number of shares, giving you the illusion that you personally earned that amount per share you own. It's the finance world's way of making enormous numbers feel personal and tiny numbers feel acceptable.
Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization, or as cynics call it, earnings before all the stuff that actually matters. It's the financial equivalent of saying you ran a marathon if you don't count the parts where you walked, stopped, and took an Uber.
The practice of using accounting flexibility to smooth earnings or hit targets—a polite term for creative number manipulation that's legal until suddenly it isn't. It's the difference between aggressive accounting and fraud, and that line is thinner than accountants admit.
Operating income that excludes financing costs and tax expenses, providing a clearer view of operational performance. It's EBITDA's more conservative cousin that remembers depreciation and amortization are real expenses.
The practice of rolling over short-term loans continuously to make them function as long-term financing, or cosmetically refreshing products to extend their revenue life. It's kicking the can down the road with extra steps.
Money that exits your bank account faster than your ability to justify why you needed it in the first place. In business contexts, it's the art of categorizing spending so the tax man won't cry, and in personal finance, it's the stuff that makes you wonder where your paycheck went. Track them obsessively or live in blissful ignorance—there is no middle ground.
Deferred acquisition payments contingent on the target company hitting future performance metrics, bridging valuation gaps between optimistic sellers and skeptical buyers. It's 'prove it and we'll pay more.'
A company's total value including debt and excluding cash, representing what you'd pay to own it outright and settle all obligations. It's market cap's more sophisticated cousin that actually understands capital structure.
A revolving credit facility that automatically renews, giving borrowers perpetual access to funds as long as they meet conditions. It's the financial equivalent of a gym membership that never expires—convenient until you can't make the payments.
A feature within a security that gives the issuer or holder rights to take specific actions, like calling bonds early or converting to equity. The financial equivalent of fine print that can drastically change deal terms.
A quarterly conference call where executives present financial results to analysts and investors, then spend an hour tap-dancing around difficult questions. It's theater performed by people who memorized the phrase 'we remain cautiously optimistic.'
The formal way of saying 'money spent,' used by accountants and government agencies to make spending sound more official and less like shopping. It's the act of paying out funds or the amount actually disbursed, tracked obsessively in budgets everywhere. The difference between expenditure and expense is subtle enough that even accountants argue about it at parties—yes, those parties are exactly as fun as they sound.
A subjective assessment of how much reported earnings reflect actual economic reality versus accounting gimmicks and one-time items. High-quality earnings come from sustainable operations; low-quality earnings come from financial engineering and hope.
The annual fee expressed as a percentage that mutual funds and ETFs charge for the privilege of managing your money. It seems small until you realize how much that 1% compounds against you over decades.
Money that flies out of your wallet or company coffers, usually faster than you can track it, for goods, services, or operational necessities. In business, these are the costs of keeping the lights on and the wheels turning. In legal contexts, it's often what you're trying to recover after someone else's mistake cost you dearly.
The holy grail number that makes or breaks quarterly investor calls and determines whether executives get bonuses or pink slips. It's the money a company actually makes (profits) or what you take home from your job (wages), stripped of all the accounting wizardry and excuses. Wall Street obsesses over this single metric like it's the meaning of life.
A magical loophole in the tax code that lets you keep slightly more of your own money, usually granted for dependents, disabilities, or other life circumstances the government deems worthy of pity. It's the carrot in a system that's mostly stick. Your accountant mentions these in hushed, reverent tones.
A marketplace or centralized system for trading securities, commodities, or currencies—the digital or physical agora where price discovery happens and fortunes are made or lost in microseconds.
To spend, consume, or use up resources—usually money or effort—in pursuit of a goal or outcome. In budget speak, it's the moment when 'allocated funds' become 'actually spent money.'
Fancy financial speak for stocks—those little pieces of companies you can buy that either make you feel like Warren Buffett or a complete idiot, depending on the day. They represent actual ownership in a corporation, unlike bonds where you're just the company's reluctant banker. The asset class that lets you participate in capitalism's rollercoaster while your stomach does backflips every time the market hiccups.