Would­n’t that be nice? Secure your own finan­cial future and do some­thing for the envi­ron­ment at the same time. We’ll show you how. To do this, it is advis­able to take a brief look at the top­ic of old-age pro­vi­sion. Because the way you invest your mon­ey for retire­ment should suit you and your life. How does our pen­sion sys­tem actu­al­ly work? What is impor­tant when choos­ing the right finan­cial plan? And what kind of sen­si­ble invest­ment will make you more relaxed about grow­ing old on our blue plan­et?

Step 1: Pen­sion — How does it work?

Pen­sions in Ger­many can be divid­ed into three areas:

- Statu­to­ry pen­sion insur­ance
- Occu­pa­tion­al pen­sion pro­vi­sion
- Pri­vate pen­sion pro­vi­sion

Think of it like a pyra­mid. The basis is the statu­to­ry pen­sion insur­ance. It is com­pul­so­ry for every employ­ee to pay part of their salary into it. Cer­tain pro­fes­sions (e.g. doc­tors or lawyers) pay into pro­fes­sion­al pen­sion schemes, for free­lancers there is the option of a pri­vate basic pen­sion (e.g. Rürup) and for civ­il ser­vants there is the civ­il ser­vice pen­sion scheme. The mon­ey col­lect­ed is in turn paid out to peo­ple who can no longer work due to old age or oth­er rea­sons. So one gen­er­a­tion pro­vides for the next.
If this is not enough — and unfor­tu­nate­ly this is increas­ing­ly the case — the oth­er two areas sup­ple­ment the basis of the statu­to­ry pen­sion pro­vi­sion. Occu­pa­tion­al pen­sion pro­vi­sion is a sup­ple­men­tary pen­sion (e.g. Riester) which your employ­er can help you with and which the state sup­ports through tax ben­e­fits. On top of that, you can think about ways to invest your mon­ey. Pri­vate alter­na­tives for old-age pro­vi­sion are, for exam­ple, life insur­ance, pen­sion insur­ance, equi­ty funds or real estate.

Due to demo­graph­ic change, few­er and few­er peo­ple are pay­ing into the statu­to­ry pen­sion scheme, while more and more peo­ple are receiv­ing pen­sions. This makes the base small­er. The afore­men­tioned pyra­mid is turn­ing around, so to speak, and increas­ing­ly call­ing on you to invest in your old-age pro­vi­sion. But where to start?

Step 2: Invest­ing mon­ey — What suits you?

Which invest­ment is worth­while for you in order to have enough mon­ey in old age depends entire­ly on you and your life cir­cum­stances and your plans for the future. Do you dream of a per­ma­nent job, a fam­i­ly, three chil­dren, a house with a gar­den and a gold­en retriev­er, or of tour­ing the globe with your start-up idea? In oth­er words, do you val­ue secu­ri­ty or flex­i­bil­i­ty? How secure will your job be in 20 years? How much equi­ty can you raise? How liq­uid do you want to be with ris­ing or falling rates?

Long-term, pre­fab­ri­cat­ed prod­ucts that a bank employ­ee puts on your desk are no longer an option for most younger clients. Mate­r­i­al invest­ments, such as buy­ing a house, are also dif­fi­cult for young pro­fes­sion­als. A bal­anced option, on the oth­er hand, is offered by so-called ETFs (Exchange Trade Funds). These are share pack­ages in the form of sav­ings plans that, when invest­ed broad­ly, can some­times yield high­er returns despite low costs.

If you want to earn more mon­ey than with life insur­ance, your own home or secu­ri­ties, you could also try invest­ing on the inter­net: Cryp­tocur­ren­cies, NFTs and the like, but be aware of the risks and the high fluc­tu­a­tions.

And since this is a young, for many still unknown mar­ket, you should pay atten­tion to trans­paren­cy.

Trans­paren­cy? Flex­i­bil­i­ty? Yield? This brings us to an idea that com­bines all these needs and offers you excit­ing projects in sus­tain­abil­i­ty and renew­able ener­gy. Wel­come to Step 3: Wat­ti­fy!

Step 3: Your Wat­ti­fy invest­ment as a retire­ment plan

With Wat­ti­fy, you can invest in sus­tain­able impact projects and earn a return on your invest­ment. But not only that. By real­is­ing renew­able ener­gies with your invest­ment, you are also dri­ving for­ward the ener­gy tran­si­tion. And as we know, this is also an essen­tial part of the fight against cli­mate change. Your invest­ment is there­fore not only a finan­cial retire­ment pro­vi­sion, but also an exis­ten­tial one.
In your Wat­ti­fy app you will find dif­fer­ent projects with dif­fer­ent terms: short‑, medi­um- and long-term. When it comes to retire­ment plan­ning, you can focus on those projects that are long-term. We are sure that you will find the project that fits your plans for the future.