GODWIN-XAVIER AYEEBO: FINANCIAL LITERACY FOR ALL-RETIREMENT PLAN

GODWIN-XAVIER AYEEBO: FINANCIAL LITERACY FOR ALL-RETIREMENT PLAN

FINANCIAL LITERACY FOR ALL-PASSIVE INCOME

Human beings depend on some form of income to survive life on earth. One type of income is Passive Income that I would share with you today. We looked at Portfolio income sometime ago and we had briefly talked about earned or active income which we said it is income earned from employment, i.e. your monthly salary.

Passive income is one type of income that earns a lot but does not necessarily need your physical strength especially at the revenue earning stage. Initially, a lot of effort would be required but, when the project starts generating revenue; it would not need your effort again. Passive income could be a regular income to you on regular basis without much effort from you.

What then is passive income? Passive income is income derived from royalties, patent rights, copyrights, screen play royalties, royalties from movies, books, television and all other forms of intellectual property rights. Passive income is also income got from real estate, i.e. rent. Internet advertisements on websites/ blogs could also earn you passive income.

Passive income could only be derived if and only when we use our brains to create things and become the originators of those inventions and or discoveries. You are fully entitled to the rights and benefits of an intellectual property if you are the one who invented or discovered it and had legal backing to protect it. 

We have different types of intellectual people: the technical people, the people’s people, the analytical people and the creative people. All these categories could do something that could entitle them to some form of intellectual property rights, but the creative people are the group that get unimaginable passive income from their creativity.

The creative people are mostly writers, actors, artists, artistes or musicians, inventors, comedians, scientists, who invent and have discoveries, entrepreneurs, who invent new products, methods and systems.  The creative people have powerful thinking processes and they use this to create more money for themselves and for generations.    

Passive income is income for these people who use their brains and for that matter their intellectual property to create things and become original owners, thereby getting the license that entitles them to sole proprietorship. Any one, who wants to use their invented/discovered property, must pay to be allowed to do that.  This is a great source of income to people who have undertaken to work on earning much from intellectual property. It is their full time job and all they do is to think and think and come out with something that has never existed and get license to it to be their bonafide property. They could then rent or sell to others who want o make use of the creativity.

All over the world, it is known that we have landlords/ladies and tenants. These two are not the same; the landlords/ladies are like the entrepreneurs or employers but the tenant is like the employee, the tenant pays rent to their landlords/ladies periodically and this is complete passive income enjoyed by the owners. They originally had to spend maybe their earned or portfolio income to put up these structures and turn them into incoming generating ventures, earning them rent.   

Anybody could be a passive income earner, but the creative (C) people who spend much of their time meditating, taking cogent decisions, contemplating deeply and inventing and giving to society what it needs as a necessity and who love doing that are the true intellectual property owners.

Creativity has nothing to do with the level of your classroom education or formal education.

 Thomas Alva Edison, who was the greatest and highest patent rights holder and still has not been beaten had just three months of formal education, but he lacked nothing as far as creativity was concerned.  He had a powerful thinking process and he made sure he had legal backing for his inventions, because there are always thieves in the neighbourhood, who would even try to steal from your mind.

Thomas Edison, I believe, he is the most persistent and persevered person I ever read about. He never gave up till he succeeded.

Robert Kiyosaki wrote “It is the way of thinking that creates assets and once you have that way of thinking you will be richer than you ever dreamed possible.”   

Henry Ford said “Thinking is the hardest work there is. That is why so few people engage in it.”

Henry Ford’s formal educational level was just high school, yet he was able to build an empire of wealth for generations. He was a stubborn powerful thinker and doer. 

In Ghana, there are many people, who are very creative and are really making it even if on a low scale. I want to encourage especially my colleague young guys, who believe that they have the ability to sit down and create things to begin now. They don’t need to look for jobs anywhere. Just begin creating and you would be marvelled the exposure you would get and the money that will follow. Young Ghanaians should begin to write books, they should become internet gurus and go into invention of many things that are marketable to the populace. They will be self-made millionaires soon.

Smart young guys should learn how to acquire assets with their creativity that is they should create something and get passive income from that thing and use the money to buy another thing they desire. Creative people don’t necessarily need to have money before they acquire property. They could create their own intellectual property, get the money from it and use that passive income to acquire that dream house, hospital, hotel, business and all that you can dream of.

The future of the world is in the hands of creative people. They are the people who use the right side of their brains greatly together with the left side minimally.   

© 2010, Godwin-Xavier Ayeebo

Blog: www.g-xavierayeebo.blogspot.com

Email: gayeebo@gmail.com

ERADICATION OF POVERTY IN NORTHERN GHANA

Life in northern Ghana is not easy. Living standards are very low compared to southern Ghana.
Development between the north and south leaves a very big gap that will take radical and drastic measures to bridge it. Formal education got to northern after over hundred years of formal education in the southern Ghana. The gap started there and since has not been bridged. The biggest problem is that the northerners who hail from there, and are well-to-do in the south do not ever want to go back home to help a bit. The northerners should try to build their own houses and I believe that outsiders would help them build nice, beautiful, inviting and tantalizing homes.

If all northerners, who, are doing well in the south or in other countries, should team up and contribute in very various to fight poverty in the north, the supposed poverty will be defeated. The professors, the accountants, the lawyers, the medical officers, the military officers, the customs officers, the sports professionals, the police officers, the prison officers, the fire service officers, the bank officials, the miners, the lecturers, the nurses, the station masters, the loading boys, the drivers and all other northern brothers and sisters, who are doing well in the south could all make the north a better place to live if we all contribute money, share ideas and wage a crusade to eradicate poverty in the north.
We all know very well the problem in northern Ghana; low education, no white collar jobs, high poverty level, low rain fall, bad weather, severe harmattan, the land becoming desolate, no potable drinking water for the people, and very unnecessary conflicts.
However, northern Ghana can boast of sunshine for solar power generation, attractive, natural energetic and beautiful women and handsome men, natural tourism sights, hardworking people, cattle, sheep, goats, fowls, pure vegetables, cereals, vast land for maize, rice, groundnuts, sheabutter, mangoes, guavas, many fruits than in the south, sorghum, malt, millet, cotton, wheat cultivation.
Northern Ghana can therefore become one of the most beautiful places in the world if all stakeholders, put their energies and ideas together for a common cause. Northern Ghana currently needs: modern dams, irrigational facilities, fertilizers being available and subsidized, silos, barns, boreholes, canals, and controlled prices for onions, sheabutter, tomatoes, poultry and other livestock. Solar energy should be tapped for power generation for factory use and for use for many other activities.

There should be financial assistance and grants to farmers without impediments or middlemen.
If it is true that we all want the eradication of poverty in the northern Ghana to become a reality, then:

• Parliamentarians from the north should start now. They should form an association to contribute money and ideas to embark on developmental projects in the north. They can say for instance that, this, month, this year, the next three weeks, the next five years, we all MPs from northern Ghana, we are contributing to construct a northern dam for a particular place, village or town. After this, then they embark on another project. Next time they all come together to construct a canal for a particular place. Their projects could be long or short term projects. As far as democracy prevails in Ghana, there shall continue to be Mps from northern Ghana, so it does not matter who and who are MPs, what matters is that the association should be a non-partisan association.

• Professional accountants from northern Ghana should form their own association and contribute funds to embark on other projects, like, constructing commercial, technical schools, and computer centres etc.

Lawyers from northern Ghana should form an association to embark on other projects, e.g. library complexes, etc.

Medical doctors, judges, lecturers, teachers, nurses, drivers, station masters, and all northerners in southern Ghana should contribute.

Nobody would build the north for us, not even a president from the north.

It’s a collective responsibility

The central government must have a non-partisan long term development policy and plan for northern Ghana. The government should begin to encourage oneness, unity, let the rule of law really work in northern Ghana to forestall the unnecessary conflicts over there among northern brothers and sisters, and to promote peace and unity for development
• Government should build modern hospitals with the state-of- art facilities. Modern schools, primary, JHS, SHS, polytechnics, universities, build tourist attraction places in northern Ghana. I challenge the present and future governments to help turn northern Ghana into an oasis of tourist attraction in the years to come. Only our imaginations limit us to the possibilities and opportunities that exist in northern Ghana. There abound endless opportunities in northern for generations to come.

Others like NGOs, foreign Investors, ADB, NIB, etc. should all assist heavily, meaningfully for the development of northern Ghana.

• The elimination of some cultural practices and the eradication expensive funerals and marriage rites in the north.
• SOURCES OF FUNDING:
• A compulsory fund set up for long term development of the north. I am not talking about a fund that is not backed by law and will be discarded when there is a new government. This fund should be constitutionally recognized and entrenched.

Chiefs in the north should be encouraged to organize their subjects and divisional chiefs to levy their subjects compulsorily every year, some small amount for all grown-up residents in the north. I believe many both men and women could contribute at least GHC 2 during their harvesting period, between November and January each year. The people, who contribute should know the purpose for their contribution and the money should be paid into a bank account that only credible, well meaning people who live among the contributors and have been nominated as members of the management of such a fund, should be allowed to sign for withdrawals and make sure all monies collected have been deposited into the right account.

Government should link up with the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB), National Investment Bank (NIB) and foreign investors and encourage them to invest in northern Ghana.

• Laws should be passed to enforce and encourage northerners to contribute towards the development of north.

• Philanthropists should be encouraged to assist develop the north.

On Thursday, 24th September 2009, the Ghanaian Daily Graphic reported that, there was going to be a business fair in Tamale, the northern regional capital, starting from 28th September 2009. I applaud the originators and organizers of this business fair. More of these business fairs and similar ones should be encouraged in the north..

There were worse places elsewhere in the world than the situation in north Ghana, but the natives and the government have been able to turn such places into some of the best places on earth. It can be done in northern Ghana. Let us all contribute our quota to make northern Ghana a blessing for us and a manifestation of God’s wonderful, beautiful creation. God has given us wisdom and has provided everything for us to use to eliminate poverty in the north and make the north a place where life could be freely enjoyed.

I still have wonderful memories of my childhood in the village of Zaago near Bawku.

It was great, we would swim in the village dam, play games, wrestle one another, ride horse and donkeys and many other nostalgic memories.

Long life northern Ghana, Long live Ghana

©2009, Godwin-Xavier Ayeebo,
Blog: www.g-xavierayeebo.blogspot.com
Email: gayeebo@gmail.com