Aliyat and Aisha have been friends from cradle. All through their lives, they’ve always done things together. They attended the same secondary school, lived together during their university years, and even landed their dream jobs in the same organization.

A few months later, Aliyat found out that Aisha was investing in something without her knowledge. Aisha even had the guts to say it was part of her retirement plan.

How’s that even possible? Don’t they both have Retirement Savings Accounts at the company?

“Aliyat, relax. It is called an Additional Voluntary Plan or AVC; a system that helps you contribute extra funds to your retirement account, that’s all!”

“But, why do we have to do that? What’s our mandatory pension contribution for?” Aliyat asked.

“Cos my papa no be Dangote or Adeleke, but I go…” Aisha started singing jokingly.

“Madam, be serious for once na!” Aliyat screamed.

“Okay, my father’s retirement taught me a lot. I found out about AVC as an undergraduate, when Baba retired, we all thought he had enough saved in his retirement account to cater to our needs, but we were shocked when we realised that his retirement income couldn’t do much for us, because the economy had gotten rougher. Thankfully, my two brothers had graduated, served, and gotten jobs. If not, Sapa would have shown us a high level of pepper o.

That was when I decided that whenever I started working, I wouldn’t depend on the mandatory pension from my company but will personally contribute extra funds to my pension pot, to avoid what happened to my dad.

How about you?

With the volatile nature of the economy, won’t you like to plan your life in such a way that you don’t become anyone’s financial burden at old age?

Apart from contributing to your pension pot, do you want to diversify your investments? click here.