How satisfied are you with your retirement package?

By Divine Sewornu Dzokoto

I remember, in 1992, when one of the mothers in my life went on retirement. She was a Field Officer in a semi-state organisation and had worked for 32 years.

Her retirement package was then thirty-two thousand old cedis (GHc3.20). In this article, I would like to introduce you to a concept that can help generate a huge return on investment within five years or less. It is a return on investment that has the potential to do better than a retirement package or greatly compliment it.

This mother of mine had a daughter and a son in two state universities at the time. When the next semester started, she gave GHc1.40 to the daughter at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and GHc1.20 to the son at the University of Cape Coast. That was the end of the lamp sum she received. Now she has to make do with the monthly pension payment, also a paltry sum.

There are many other men and women like this mother, who go on retirement every month. When they look at their retirement package, relative to the current economic environment, they usually ask, “Is this all?” Mostly, that is all.

There will be many others to come as long as there is a working population in Ghana and the world over. Most of the time, the problem is not with the Pension Scheme Manager, it is the fact that monthly contributions to the Pension Fund is nothing to write home about. When your package is computed based on your contribution over the years, you do not have enough to take home.

Mostly, it is not only the number of years you work but also how much your monthly contribution to the Fund has been.

No matter how small you consider your pension package to be, you do not leave it with the Pension Manager. You have waited for over twenty, thirty forty years, only to realise that you do not have enough to execute any of the things you dreamed of doing with your retirement package. There is countless number of people in the working class who may fall into this same group.

Over the years, many Human Resource Managers have organised seminars for their workers to educate them on how to plan for retirement so that they are not taken by surprise. I would like to suggest an approach that can compliment any other plans you have for a comfortable retirement.

Honestly, if you can wait for ten, twenty, thirty and forty years to receive your pension package, then you can invest a small amount of money in cryptocurrency, to receive over a thousand per cent in say, five years. That is definitely many years before your actual retirement age.

A cryptocurrency is a digital currency which uses encryption techniques to regulate the generation of units of currency. According to Wikipedia, it is a medium of exchange using cryptography to secure transactions and control the creation of new coins. Crypocurrency is different from fiat money like the US dollar because while fiat money is backed by a promise, cryptocurrency is backed by mathematics. Cryptocurrency is created by running a computer programme that solves mathematical equations.

The first cyptocurrency is called bitcoin (BTC). It was created by an unknown developer called Satoshi Nakamoto. Bitcoin is described as a system of payment in which all payments are recorded in a public ledger. The U.S Treasury Department has described it as a decentralised cryptocurrency.

In January 2009, when bitcoin was launched, one bitcoin (BTC) was less than 53 American cents. At the time of writing this script, one bitcoin is $261. (Check the current value at this link: www.zapit.nu/btcmktcap. Over the years, more cryptocurrencies were launched. We have litecoin, launched on 7th October, 2011, Namecoin, launched on 18th April, 2012, Peercoin, launched on 12th August, 2012. On 8th December, 2013, Dogecoin launched and virtacoin was launched on 1st July, 2014.

Every one of these coins, started at the price of $0.00. The thing about cryptocurrency is that, as more and more people use it, the price appreciates. So by the close of 2009, one bitcoin was $0.53, but now it is $261, the price of one litecoin was $3.00, peercoin is now $0.36, namecoin is now $0.38, dogecoin is now $0.00057 and virtacoin was $0.00000500.

I am of a strong opinion that virtacoin, which is the cheapest of all the cryptocurrencies mentioned above, currently, has the potential of appreciating to more than one dollar long before someone retires. I will recommend that you buy 100,000 or more virtacoins and keep. One hundred virtacoins, currently will cost between GHc5.00 and GHc10.00. You may even decide to have one million virtacoins. It is important to note that before 3rd September, 2015, the same GHc5.00 could have purchased about 200,000 virtacoins. The value of virtacoin doubled on September, 3rd. As you read, there is another 50% value addition on some exchanges. This might become the case very soon, in which case, the same GHc5.00 cannot get you 100,000 virtacoins.

If in three years, the price of one virtacoin shoots to $0.25 cents and you have one million of them, then you are richer by 250,000 American dollars. Calculate the same amount in cedis (GHc4.00 = $1.00). This is not an alternative to your regular pension package, per se, it is to compliment it but you can realize that as a low income earner, this is not a mean compliment to your retirement package but a huge one. Think of the things 250,000 American dollars can help you to get.

Make a Google search for local agents near you. If you type “Buy virtacoin in Ghana” or any country of your residence in your search engine, you will get a seller. You can also get it for free at www.zapit.nu/vtaforfree