I had to spend

Open Forum in English
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I had to spend 8000 to fix my car this week.

Is it okay to use “to” (infinitive) after the verb “spend”? Or I have to use Ving?

Thank you!!!

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I think it is helpful to distinguish between (at least) two different uses of the infinitive:

  1. Some verbs may take a second verb as a complement. Some of them would take it in infinitive form, some in gerund (ing form), some may take both:
    I want to come, I suggest doing this or that etc.
  2. Sometimes the infinitive is not really a complement of the verb but it’s used to express a goal, an end. In this case you can consider it equivalent to expressions such as “in order to”, “so as to”. In this case you can never replace them with a -ing form and it doesn’t matter what the main verb is (as long as the resulting sentence makes sense, of course).
    You are wordking your question as if you thought that your example is of the first kind. That is, you ask “Does the spend verb takes an infinitive of a gerund as a complement?”
    But your example is of the second kind. That is, the verb “spend” does not take a verbal complement, either as an infinitive or as a gerund. Here the infinitie expresses a cause, you could replace it with “so that I could fix my car”, “in order to fix my car…”, etc. Thus, it doesn’t make any sense to replace it with a gerund.
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