Only people who earn a lot of money are successful

IELTS Writing Task 2 with sample answer.

You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement:

Only people who earn a lot of money are successful.

Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience.

Write at least 250 words.


Sample Answer:
The issue whether money is the main yardstick of success is controversial one. Some people contend that people who have tons of money are successful, while others argue that success has very little relationship with money. However, I am of the honest opinion that success does not lie in money. In the history of mankind, there is a pile of exemplary figures who did not have much money and even some of them were poverty stricken. Apart from this, success is what one wants to achieve, and it may be money, may be achieve good position in job or something else.

To start with, nothing could be further from the truth than the idea that only rich people are successful. History evidences the great successful sons of his had no great deal of money. We have Socrates, Leonardo Da Vinci, Mother Teresa, and Nelson Mandela to name just as few. Now let’s take Bill Gates, for example, as a successful money maker who has become the richest person of the world many times. But should we only consider his success with the amount of money he made? Is not the breakthrough in the software industry a bigger measure of his success? Windows operating system he brought forward is the measure of his success though everything gave him monetary benefits. It is, thus, said that success does not reside in money.

Again, success, in common parlance, is the accomplishment of goal or purpose and it always differs from person to person’s perspectives. Some people want to be a good doctor, some good educationist, some famous politician and so on. They strive for their goal bit by bit and want to write a new story of success. Besides, people view success from their own point of view. That is to say that success is defined by each person in his own angle. Take my grandmother as an example. She is a housewife. She does not earn a single penny. But I believe she is a successful mother in rearing her children as a better human being and a better citizen.

To wrap up, although in today’s world success is focused on how fat your pay check is, I contend that money not necessarily makes a man successful. A man becomes successful only when he achieves his goal and different people have different goals.