六级备考6天｜CET

Questions 22 to 25 are based on the recording you have just heard. 

An American researcher who studied 600 millionaires found how rich you can get comes down to six wealth factors. She found that six behaviors are related to net worth potential, regardless of age or income. These were thriftiness, confidence, responsibility, planning, focus and social indifference. 

Being thrifty comes as no great surprise. Spending above your means, spending instead of saving for retirement, spending in anticipation of becoming wealthy, makes you a slave to the paycheck. (22) "Even with an astronomical level of income," she wrote, "to properly build wealth, experts recommend saving 20% of your income and living off the remaining 80%.”

Having confidence is another key characteristic, as it helps people to be thrifty. (23) It takes confidence to live within your means. It also takes confidence to invest properly. Instead of making investing decisions with your emotions, financial planners advise that you should leave your investments alone and focus on a long-term investment plan. But people can’t invest or manage their own money without accepting responsibility for the outcomes. Many millionaires take on personal responsibility, and most also happen to be self-made, meaning they didn’t acquire their wealth through luck. 

(24) Millionaires don’t count on anyone else to make them rich, and they don’t blame anyone else if they fall short. They focus on things they can control and align their daily habits to the goals they have set for themselves. They tend to be goal-oriented and hard workers, which enables them to plan financially and focus on seeing those plans through. 92% of the millionaires surveyed developed a long- term plan for their money and 97% almost always achieved the goals they set for themselves. 

And it is these behaviors that make it easy for them to be socially indifferent. They resist lifestyle creep, the tendency to spend more whenever one earns more. (25) Essentially, they don’t yield to pressure to buy the latest thing or to keep up with others or what they have acquired. Instead of being focused on what might make them happy today, they’re focused on their long-term wealth-building plan. 

22. What do experts recommend concerning being thrifty?

23. How does confidence help people to be thrifty? 

24. How do millionaires react when they fail in their investments? 

25. Why does the speaker say millionaires are socially indifferent?