in pocketUK
US
using your own money to pay for something, rather than using money given or lent by your employer, an insurance company, etc.:
78% of Iowans don't have a drug prescription benefit and pay all costs out of pocket.
Insurance wouldn't cover him until he spent $15,000 out of pocket.
Teachers are having to pay for their own supplies out of pocket.
My degree was paid for by me (out of pocket, no loans).
US
not able to be contacted:
There would be a week or two when he would be out of pocket.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Profits & losses
anti-profiteering
anti-speculative
be a licence to print moneyidiom
buoyancy
buoyant
cash cow
deficit
lose
lose your shirtidiom
margin
muck
non-profit-making
pi
pocket
profit from something
profit warning
profitability
rake-off
trade surplus
winnings

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

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out-of-pocket | Business English

out-of-pocket
adjective[ before noun ]
ukus
FINANCE
out-of-pocket costs, expenses, etc. are ones you have to pay yourself, rather than being paid by the company or organization you are working for:
out-of-pocket expenses/costsEmployees will be reimbursed for any out-of-pocket expenses.
INSURANCE US
out-of-pocket medical costs are not included in the price of health insurance:
Under the current program, employees pay up to $7,000 in out-of-pocket costs before full coverage kicks in.

Examples of out-of-pocket

out-of-pocket
A sense of the differential effect of drift and conversion in these nations can be gleaned from comparative data on out-of-pocket health spending.
You have complete medical insurance so that you will not have out-of-pocket expenses for any treatments.
The price of the test was stated as an out-of-pocket once in a lifetime payment.
A logistic regression analysis suggested that only "out-of-pocket" payment might decrease the access to hospitalization.
A physician acting as an agent for the ex post patient would provide the test as long as its value exceeded the patient's out-of-pocket cost.
However, after the illness has occurred (ex post), the insured patient would face little or no out-of-pocket cost for the test.
Estimates of direct out-of-pocket expenses were provided by cases responding to the questionnaire who were asked the cost of items purchased because of the illness.
The rate of direct, out-of-pocket expenditure remained high also during the early 1990s.
Since out-of-pocket payments are absent or do not differ across hospitals, actual transaction prices are not relevant for patient hospital choice.
It was assumed that neither of the programs involved an out-of-pocket expense.
In particular for high-risk lowincome people an effective incentive to shop around could mean that their out-of-pocket premium substantially exceeds x% of their income.
Patients were told that their response represented an out-of-pocket payment for the test.
These changes in benefits may in turn prompt changes in utilization, as out-of-pocket expenditure falls.
When the out-of-pocket price is zero, the income elasticity of demand for medical care is close to zero (9).
Patient costs, which include time off work, out-of-pocket expenses, and travel are often difficult to measure.
See all examples of out-of-pocket
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.