Stop Confusing spend, take, and cost: Learn the Collocations for "Spending Time and Money" Once and for All
You want to say "This phone costs 20,000 dollars," but you blurt out The phone spends 20,000 dollars, leaving your foreign friends looking utterly confused. The problem is that in Chinese, the single word "花" (spend/cost) can be paired with anything: spending time, spending money, or spending effort. English works differently—it first looks at "who the subject is" before deciding which word to use.
Don't worry, you don't need to memorize a bunch of rules. Today, we'll use a comparison of the most common mistakes made by learners, and once you read through it, you'll grasp the trick to making the right choice.
The One-Sentence Trick: Look at the Subject First
Just remember the division of labor among these three words with a simple rule of thumb:
- A person spends time or money → use spend
- An activity/event takes your time → use take
- An object/item costs a certain amount → use cost
The key lies in the subject. If the subject is a "person," use spend; if the subject is an "activity, event, or journey," use take; if the subject is a "product or service," use cost. Keep this in mind, and you will easily avoid the common mistakes below.
Error 1: Confusing cost and spend
This is the most frequent mistake. Many people want to say "I spent two hours on homework" and intuitively translate "spend" to cost.
I cost two hours on homework. ✗
I spent two hours on homework. ✓ (I spent two hours on homework.)
The subject is I (a person), so you must use spend. The memory hook is simple: people "spend" their own time and money. So if the subject is a person, stick with spend.
The sentence patterns for spend are very fixed; remembering these two is enough:
- spend + time/money + on + nouns: She spends a lot of money on books. (She spends a lot of money on books.)
- spend + time/money + verbs-ing: I spend an hour reading every night. (I spend an hour reading every night.)
Error 2: "It spends me..." Does Not Exist
To say "It takes me an hour to get there," many people reflexively use spend:
It spends me one hour to get there. ✗
It takes me an hour to get there. ✓ (It takes me an hour to get there.)
Here, the subject is It (referring to the action of "getting there"). Since an action or event is taking up your time, you must use take, not spend.
The rule of thumb: When you want to say "doing something takes (someone) a certain amount of time," the subject is usually "It" and the verb is "take". The sentence pattern looks like this:
- It takes (someone) + time + to do something
- It takes me twenty minutes to walk to school. (It takes me twenty minutes to walk to school.)
- It took us three days to finish the project. (It took us three days to finish the project.)
Quick tip: The past tense of take is took. It took me... is the natural way to say it.
Error 3: Use cost for the price of goods
Let's go back to the phone mentioned at the beginning. When talking about "how much an item costs," the subject is the item itself. This is when cost comes into play.
The phone spends 20,000 dollars. ✗
The phone costs 20,000 dollars. ✓ (This phone costs 20,000 dollars.)
The subject is "The phone" (an object). An object cannot "spend" on its own; it can only "be worth" or "cost" a certain amount, so we use cost.
cost also has two very useful sentence patterns:
- thing + cost + amount: These shoes cost 1,500 dollars. (These shoes cost 1,500 dollars.)
- thing + cost + person + amount: The repair cost me 3,000 dollars. (The repair cost me 3,000 dollars.)
By the way: The past tense of cost is still cost; it does not change. It cost me a lot. (This cost me a lot.) Using the correct past tense form will immediately make you sound like a pro to native speakers.
Error 4: Do Not Follow spend with to do
The last one is an advanced trap. To say "I spent a lot of time finishing it," many people use to + base verb:
I spent a lot of time to finish it. ✗
I spent a lot of time finishing it. ✓ (I spent a lot of time finishing it.)
When spend is followed by an action, you must use verb-ing, not to. This is the opposite of the take pattern we saw earlier (which is take + time + to do), making it easy to mix up.
Memorizing this comparison together is the best way to avoid confusion:
- It takes time to learn a language. ✓ (Learning a language takes time.) — take uses to
- I spend time learning a language. ✓ (I spend time learning a language.) — spend uses -ing
A Quick Three-Sentence Review
Let's condense today's comparison into this cheat sheet. Recite it quietly to yourself before you speak next time:
- Subject is a person → spend: I spent two hours studying. (I spent two hours studying.)
- Subject is an action/event → take: It takes two hours to study this. (It takes two hours to study this.)
- Subject is an object → cost: The book costs ten dollars. (The book costs ten dollars.)
You'll realize that the key to understanding this has been the exact same question all along: "Who or what is the subject?" Once you grasp this thread, spend, take, and cost will naturally fall into place. It might take a moment of thought at first, but with a bit of practice, it will become a reflex. That's completely normal—everyone who has mastered it went through the same process.
How to Practice on Loopy
Collocations like spend, take, and cost cannot be memorized just by looking at rules; they need to be encountered repeatedly in real sentences to be internalized. Loopy integrates them into the dialogues and listening scenarios of our graded courses, allowing you to listen and shadow according to your level (A1–B1) to naturally build up your language intuition.
- Whenever you encounter an uncertain collocation, simply search spend, take, or cost in the built-in dictionary, check the example sentences and pronunciation, and immediately identify which word matches the subject.
- Use the listening and shadowing mode to practice reading along with native speakers saying It takes me an hour... and The phone costs..., training correct patterns into oral muscle memory.
- Learned collocations will enter your forgetting curve review cycle, reappearing right at the moment you are about to forget them, helping you transition from "recalling with effort" to "speaking without thinking."
Want to find out which level is the best fit for you to start practicing? Take three minutes to complete our placement test, and let Loopy find the perfect starting point for you.