Numbers dressed up in fancy suits pretending to be words.
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles—the rulebook for how to count money in the United States, though it somehow still permits creative interpretation.
Profit divided by investment—showing how much money you made relative to what you put in, assuming you're measuring profit honestly.
The act of maintaining, preserving, or upholding something without letting it slip through your fingers—whether it's a promise, a score, or workplace morale. It's active guardianship disguised as routine.
The bookkeeper's favorite white lie—spreading a gigantic debt or capital expense across multiple years so nobody has to stare directly at the fiscal crater you just created. Whether you're slowly drowning in a mortgage or pretending that expensive software will somehow stay useful until you've paid it off, amortisation is the art of making financial pain installment-friendly.
The failure to meet financial or contractual obligations on time, or the pre-configured settings in software that nobody bothers to change—both equally problematic in their own ways.
Combining financial results from a parent company and all its subsidiaries into one statement—to hide where the actual problems are located.
When something gets smaller, fewer, or less impressive—the opposite of what marketing teams promise. In knitting, it's the deliberate reduction of stitches; in budgets, it's what finance asks for right before you need more resources.
The brave (or foolhardy) organization that creates and releases securities into the market, essentially asking strangers to trust their financial management for potential profits.
Using clever accounting structures to fund operations while keeping the debt off the balance sheet. It's how companies hide how leveraged they actually are until the structure inevitably collapses.
Money you paid in advance for something you haven't used yet—like paying for next year's insurance today.
The risk-absorbing professional who evaluates insurance policies and securities offerings, essentially betting the company's capital that catastrophe won't strike their clients anytime soon.
An actual paper dollar bill as opposed to its coin-form equivalent (quarters, dimes, etc.)—useful when someone specifically needs the whole unit and not loose change.
A financial product converting your lump sum into predictable smaller payments—essentially trading 'access to real money now' for 'existential inflation anxiety spread across decades.'
The glorious moment when investors collectively agreed your idea was worth actual money, or at least worth betting against their own judgment. The point where 'someday maybe' becomes 'oh god we actually have to build this.'
People you owe money to who possess a supernatural ability to remember the exact amount owed with devastating precision. They're technically patient but somehow expert at making debt feel like a personal betrayal.
Money in tangible form that doesn't require a banking app, passwords, or digital footprints—the preferred payment method of people doing things they'd rather not explain to auditors. Useful for those who remember what actual currency feels like.
An asset you can't touch or see—patents, trademarks, copyrights, brand value. They're valuable but impossible to calculate precisely, which makes them accountants' favorite source of creative interpretation.
Using assets pledged for one loan to secure multiple loans. It's a clever way for lenders to reduce risk and a way for borrowers to get tangled in interconnected debt.
Moving an unused deduction or credit from one tax year to the next year or future years. It's the tax world's way of softening blows from bad years by letting you use them later.
To provide funding for something from either public or private sources—basically committing money to support a cause or initiative. The financial equivalent of putting your money where your mouth actually is.
In economics, the theoretical measure of how much satisfaction or pleasure you get from consuming something—because apparently human happiness is quantifiable and totally rational. Economists invented "marginal utility" to explain why that fifth pizza slice disappoints compared to the first, and why billionaires mysteriously remain unsatisfied after their 847th purchase. It's the jargon that explains wealth without solving unhappiness.
A company kept alive by continuous financing despite being unprofitable and unlikely to ever make money. Financial walking dead.
Converting a company's assets into actual cash because it turns out the business model was primarily composed of wishful thinking and spreadsheet optimism. The corporate fire sale that happens after the fire already burned everything down.
The moment a court officially agrees that math doesn't work in your favor and you need legal intervention to salvage what's left. Where 'broke' graduates to being a legally acknowledged disaster.