Trošiti ili Potrošiti

Trošiti is imperfective: spending, as an activity that goes on. Potrošiti is perfective: spent, finished, gone. One prefix, and the whole meaning of the sentence turns.

The tell is usually the object. Trošiti novac is spending money in general; potrošiti novac is spending the money — a specific amount, now gone. Serbian has no articles, so the aspect of the verb is carrying the work that the and a do in English. That is worth sitting with, because it explains why aspect feels so much heavier in Serbian than the textbooks make it sound.

And remember the rule from earlier levels: a perfective verb has no real present tense. Potrošim cannot mean I am spending. It only lives in kad potrošim, ako potrošim, moram da potrošim — something completed in the future or in theory.

Since this is an unjumble, the second-position rule from the last exercise applies again: sam, je, ga, se go after the first stressed word, not at the front.