The Dutch national body for studentships and other financial services for students, IB-groep, commissioned STBY to investigate how their youngest clients (students in their first year at college) manage their finances. With a team of young interviewers from Spunk//STBY, we visited 20 young students at their homes throughout The Netherlands for an interview. They told us many interesting stories about how they are gradually finding out what taking care of their personal finances exactly means. We found that these young students rely heavily on their social network as a source for advise and rumours, and often get tangled up in confusions and misunderstandings and they frequently switch between online and offline modes of interactions with the IB-Groep. An innovation workshop with IB-Groep will explore the opportunities for services to better support this client group. (NL, 2008)
