Question 23 is based on the recording you have just heard.

Recording Three

听力原文

        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, even with an astronomical level of income,” she wrote. (22) [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. It takes confidence to live within your means. (23) [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.

23. How does confidence help people to be thrifty? （信心如何帮助人们节俭？）

解析：D。录音中提到，信心有助于人们节俭，紧接着解释原因：正确的投资也需要信心，理财规划师建议不要在做投资决定时感情用事，而应该不带情绪地单单着眼于投资，专注于长期的投资计划。也就是说信心能让人们进行正确的投资，专注于长期投资计划，D项符合题意，其中的focus on long-term investments对应录音中的focus on a long-term investment plan，故为正确答案。

错项排除：A项利用录音中的emotions进行干扰，但录音中是说在做投资决定时不能感情用事，并不是说信心能赋予人们处理非理性情绪的能力，故A项排除。B项的the profits from their investments在录音中无依据，故排除。C项利用录音中的financial planners进行干扰，但录音中说的是理财规划师的建议，并没有说怎样成为成功的理财规划师，故排除C项。