Fast Money And Slow Money

The Author

New technology and smart digital solutions has surely facilitated fast, everyday banking activities such as transactions and payments. The same has benefited the bad nuts in the society whose agenda is to reap off peoples hard earned money. The whole truth of the matter can’t be blamed on fraudsters alone but also on the negligence and greed of their preys. The growing number of people who are disregarding the power of compounding to make real wealth in our part of the world keeps getting larger and larger. Now, everyone wants the shortest possible means to make the most returns on their investment.

The youth these days have lost interest in the most common form of investment that was popularly known amongst them- “treasury bill”. If people can’t be confident enough to invest in treasury bill of a country, I wonder what other secured investment there could be. The outcry of the masses who are less finance intuited or educated is that returns on treasury bills are low and unprofitable. Because these people do not understand risk and reward factors, they get excited about the reward aspect of any new investment introduced to them without properly analyzing the possible risks associated. I will majorly attribute this to greed. The youth wants a “Get rich quick” scheme. Tell someone you have an investment scheme that can double their capital in 3 days and they lose their sense of scrutiny.

The trap that millennia’s fall into is that nobody is ready to take the long road of making money. Everyone wants fast returns, at most three months. Millennia’s are not ready to commit to grow their money into real wealth. I once had a discussion with my business partner who told me of a girl he had an encounter with. This young lady wanted an investment advice from him and her investment capital was Ghc2,000. But her expectations on returns on her investment was what was actually outrageous. She expected to make 50% return on her investment in a span of 1 months.

The most ridiculous investment scheme that is going on now amongst the youth is what they term as “Peer to Peer”, usually shortened as P2P. I can’t really wrap my head around why an educated person would indulge in this kind of schemes. The whole narrative about these kind of schemes are to help others for you to also get helped. Now that alone confuses me if this is a charity organisation or a real investment scheme. It doesn’t even qualify to fall into the pool of funds category because of the nature in which it operates. What happens is, when you find your self in any of these groups that initiate these schemes, you are required to pledge an amount that falls between GHc100 and GHc1000 to another member of the group. The groups usually have websites that automatically generate a peer do make payment to, in promise to also get someone to make payments to you after couple of days as stipulated. Some of these groups don’t even have any website but do all their operations from “WhatsApp” and “Telegram” app. The return on investment on these schemes ranges from 100% to 400% and that alone is a red flag for a massive fraudulent activity if not a Ponzi scheme. Anybody who doesn’t sing to the tune of the perpetuators of these schemes quickly get thrown out of the group.

Another popular one that is gradually gaining grounds amongst the youth is what they call “Network Investment”. Disguised under the umbrella of network marketing, victims are asked to make initial deposit of say GHc400, and find four down liners (Down liners here means new people you introduce who come under your pyramid in the hierarchy) to also make a deposit of Ghc400 so that they are credited 25% each of their down liners investments. As the down liners also scout for other new investors, the scheme goes on and on. The real question then becomes; what business does the initiator have? Ignorant people are deceived by financial terms such as “leveraging” to believe these are modules billionaire’s like Warren Buffet and Jeff Bezos used to amass their wealth.

People are swayed these days to indulge in all kinds of illegitimate investment schemes and if care is not taken, the next generational youth would lose confidence in investments, even in legitimate businesses. A lot hasn’t been done in terms of governments role in promoting an investment culture among citizens. The government of the day looks like they care less about the investment attitudes of their local citizens since they have their eyes targeted on investments from foreigners. In essence, creating a nitch for fraudsters who promise quick and outrageous returns to novice investors who end up being defrauded. Its amazing how people send money to an unknown person in the disguise of “investment” without any due diligence on what their invested funds would be used for, to generate that outrageous returns being promised. More so, they are not provided any proper document to understand the line of the transaction or even a physical location of the business. I talked to a young man who had invested GHc500 into one of these schemes and I asked him how on earth he could believe to get a quick return of 100% on his money within a week. His response? “I don’t really care about what the money goes to do. All I care about is the return I’ll make”. And this is a University graduate from the premier university in Ghana.

The purpose of this piece is to raise an alarm on the fraudulent schemes going on and to warn readers who may be introduced to these kind of ventures in future. For anybody who has previously engaged in this kind of schemes and made any returns, I bet it was your lucky day. If you have lost money indulging in any kind of scheme like that, you have a responsibility as a good citizen to warn others from falling a victim.

For any future enquiries into well researched investment options, do not hesitate to send me an email.

Bright Onipayede
Profile: Financial Trader (GSE, CGIA-member, CFA-member)

Email: [email protected]