Definition

The fee you're about to pay that wasn't mentioned upfront, or the accounting entry that makes your expenses look worse than they already are. It's money levied for services, penalties for existing, or the formal recognition of costs on financial statements. Also, what your credit card company loves to add in mysterious increments.

Example Usage

There's a convenience charge for paying online, a processing charge for paying by phone, and an inconvenience charge for asking about charges.

Source: Financial and accounting terminology

Related Terms

Beginner

duties

The financial toll of doing business across borders, or the moral obligation to show up to work and pretend to care. In accounting, these are taxes levied on imports and exports that make international shopping significantly less fun. In corporate life, it's the nebulous set of responsibilities that somehow always includes "other duties as assigned."

💰 Finance / Accounting
Intermediate

non-recurring charge

An expense that supposedly happens only once but mysteriously appears in financial statements every single quarter. It's management's favorite way to exclude bad news from 'adjusted' earnings while claiming it's temporary.

💰 Finance / Accounting
Intermediate

chartist

A trader who believes that staring at price charts and drawing lines on graphs can predict the future, also known as a technical analyst. They're basically financial astrologers with better software.

💰 Finance / Accounting
Beginner

footnote disclosure

Additional information buried in the tiny print at the end of financial statements, where companies hide things they're legally required to disclose but hope nobody reads. It's where the interesting stuff actually lives.

💰 Finance / Accounting
Advanced

shadow banking

Financial intermediation that happens outside traditional regulated banks, including hedge funds, money market funds, and other entities that act like banks without pesky regulations. It's called 'shadow' because regulators prefer not to see what's happening there.

💰 Finance / Accounting
Beginner

allocations

The bureaucratic art of dividing limited resources among unlimited demands, usually resulting in everyone being equally unhappy. Whether it's budget allocations, resource allocations, or asset allocations, it's about deciding who gets what slice of the pie—and then defending those decisions in seventeen different meetings. Spoiler alert: there's never enough pie.

💰 Finance / Accounting

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See “charge” in Corporate Speak, Gen-Z Slang, Pirate Speak, and more.

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Beginner

NFF

NFF simply means NO FINGER FEBRUARY...