Speaking Part 2 · ObjectsIn the Sep–Dec 2026 reported set
Describe an Item on Which You Spent More Money Than Expected
In short
“Describe an Item on Which You Spent More Money Than Expected” is a common IELTS Speaking Part 2 cue card. You get 1 minute to prepare and should speak for 1–2 minutes, covering all four points below. This page gives you a Band 9 model answer, an idea map so you can make it your own, the Part 3 follow-up questions with answers, and the vocabulary examiners reward.
The task card
Describe an Item on Which You Spent More Money Than Expected. You should say:
- •What the item was
- •How much you expected to spend
- •Why it cost more
- •And explain whether you think it was worth it
Band 9 model answer
The item was a pair of walking boots, which I mention because it's the least glamorous expensive purchase I've ever made and also the one I've thought about most.
I'd budgeted, in my head, somewhere around sixty or seventy — I'd had a pair at roughly that price for years and they'd been adequate. I walked into the shop expecting to be out in fifteen minutes. I left having spent a little over two hundred, which is a multiple I still find slightly embarrassing.
Why it cost more comes down to a conversation I hadn't expected to have. The woman serving me asked what I was using them for, and when I described a trip I had coming up she asked to see my old boots, which I happened to have in a bag. She turned one over, showed me that the sole had separated from the upper along about a third of its length, and explained — without any pressure at all, which is why it worked — that this was the pair that had given me the ankle problem I'd just mentioned in passing. Then she spent about forty minutes fitting three different pairs, including making me walk down a ramp in each, and the ones that were unambiguously right were the expensive ones. I did try to talk myself into the cheaper pair. She let me, and then pointed out quite mildly that I'd be walking eighty kilometres in them.
Whether it was worth it — yes, and I'd say that fairly confidently now in a way I couldn't at the till. The ankle problem went away entirely and hasn't come back in three years. The boots have since done two long trips and a great deal of ordinary walking and show essentially no wear. And I've had them resoled once, which cost about thirty and which the cheaper pair couldn't have had done at all, because they weren't built to be repaired.
So the arithmetic has actually reversed. Two hundred over what looks like at least eight or nine years is cheaper per year than replacing a seventy-pound pair every two, which is exactly what I'd been doing without noticing.
What I took from it is that I'd been buying on price rather than on cost, and those are different things. I'd like to claim I've applied that consistently since. I haven't — but I do now ask how long something is meant to last before I ask what it costs.
Make it your own: three angles
Something durable you were persuaded to upgrade
The best structure, because the fourth bullet gets a genuinely reasoned answer about cost over time rather than a yes or no.
A trip or event that went over budget
Good if the overspend came from many small additions — that lets you explain how it crept up, which is a more interesting story.
A repair that turned out to be far bigger
Strong for a negative verdict, which is perfectly acceptable — an honest "no, it was not worth it" with reasons scores well.
What the examiner is listening for
The fourth bullet asks for a judgement, and this card rewards a reasoned one either way. The model argues 'worth it' through cost over time rather than satisfaction, which produces comparison structures and conditional forms naturally. Note the range of money vocabulary available here — use it, but keep the actual numbers few, because a long turn full of figures reads as a receipt.
Part 1 warm-up questions
- Do you keep track of what you spend?
- Do you prefer to save money or spend it?
- Have you ever regretted buying something?
- Do you compare prices before buying?
Part 3 follow-up questions & answers
Why do people sometimes spend more than they plan to?
Partly because budgets are set before you have the information — you decide what something should cost without knowing what it costs. Beyond that, sellers are good at reframing the decision, usually by shifting it from price to consequence. And there's the sunk cost of having already gone to the shop and spent an hour there, which makes leaving empty-handed feel like waste.
Is expensive always better quality?
Certainly not — a great deal of price is brand, retail margin and marketing rather than materials. But there's usually a genuine floor below which quality really does fall off, and the useful question isn't whether expensive is better but where the curve flattens. For most categories the best value sits somewhere in the middle, and the very top is paying for signalling.
Should children be taught about money?
Emphatically, and it's a strange gap in most curriculums. Budgeting, compound interest, how credit actually works and how advertising is designed to affect you are all things nearly every adult needs and very few are taught. The assumption that families pass it on doesn't hold, and it tends to reproduce whatever financial habits a child happened to grow up with.
Do people buy too many things they do not need?
In wealthier countries, clearly — the volume of storage space and the size of the second-hand market are evidence enough. What drives it is less greed than friction: buying has become effortless, and anything effortless gets done more. I'd also say a lot of purchasing is emotional and then justified afterwards, which is why we're all so good at explaining our own.
Is it better to buy cheap items often or expensive ones rarely?
For anything durable and used heavily, buying well once is usually cheaper over time and produces less waste. The honest caveat is that this only works if you have the money upfront, and people on tight budgets often can't access the cheaper option — which is a genuine and underdiscussed way in which being poor is expensive.
How has online shopping changed how people spend?
It's removed almost every point of friction — comparison, waiting, even the act of entering card details — and friction was doing a lot of quiet work in restraining spending. It's also made prices far more transparent, which should help. On balance I'd say people spend more and pay less per item, and end up with a great deal more of everything.
Useful vocabulary
| Word / phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| to go over budget | to spend more than planned |
| to splash out | to spend a lot of money on something |
| value for money | worth what it costs |
| to be worth every penny | to fully justify its cost |
| an impulse buy | something bought without planning |
| a false economy | saving money now but costing more later |
| to last (a long time) | to remain usable |
| to haggle | to negotiate over a price |
| built to be repaired | designed so it can be fixed, not replaced |
| cost per year | price divided by how long something lasts |
More cue cards
Describe a Time You Saved Money
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