These Phrases Will Help You 'Drive a Hard Bargain'
No matter what industry you work in, making good deals is always important — especially for the people who control the budget! Use these phrases the next time you need to negotiate.
A "ballpark figure" is an estimated amount, rather than an exact number. This phrase comes from baseball, and may have started with someone estimating how many fans were watching a game by looking around the stadium, or ballpark.
If you are doing something "on a shoestring budget," then you don't have a lot of money to spend on it. On the other hand, having "money to burn" means having so much cash that wasting some of it wouldn't matter.
However, even if you have a lot of money, you don't want to "pay through the nose" for something. This is when you pay much more than you should have, or more than is fair.
If someone "drives a hard bargain," they're good at getting what they want in a negotiation. An employee like this is good for a company's "bottom line," or its net profit.
When you finally reach an agreement, you can say that you've "clinched the deal." The phrase comes from an old meaning of the word "clinch," which is to secure a nail by flattening the part of it that is sticking out of a piece of wood.
