About Nibud

Nibud (National Institute for Family Finance Information) is a very well-known and respected independent foundation in the Netherlands that gives information and advice on financial matters of private households.

Its mission is to contribute to family welfare by promoting a sound way of money management.

Pursuing its goal

Nibud does this on the one hand by enabling households to make decisions on their own about matters with consequences on their budgets.

On the other hand, Nibud increases the expertise of institutions for as much these influence the budgets of private households with their policy, advice or education. These institutions range from banks, financial service providers and advisors via national and local governments to debt help organizations and schools.

Nibud is a non-profit independent organization. The national government and the private financial sector finance around 25% of the projects. The rest is financed by the revenues of Nibud products and services.

Nibud was founded in 1979. Its office is based in Utrecht. Nibud employs a staff of 30. The employees are specialists in micro-economics, debt help, financial behavior, fiscal law, financial education and communication.

Getting in touch

If you would like to know more about Nibud, its products or projects, please contact us or call (31)30 – 2391 350 during office hours. Or fill in the contact form.

National projects

We translate our knowledge and expertise in various ways to professionals who deal with the financial matters of private households. For example, we offer:

• Research and consultancy
• Reference budgets and calculation tools
• Educational courses
• Educational material

As we are a national institute in the Netherlands, most of our reports, tools and other material are in Dutch. Only a few are translated into English.

Reference budgets

Nibud has actual figures on the spending patterns of Dutch citizens. How reference budgets are calculated is described in this Handbook:
One of the results of this project was an handbook on reference budgets.

Nibud’s reference budgets play an important role in Dutch society. It is the basis of poverty measurement. The way this is done, can be read in this report:  ‘The minimum agreed upon’.

The reference budgets are also the basis for norms on mortgage and consumer credit in the Netherlands.

Saving for the first home (with Erasmus University Rotterdam and Harvard University)

This report outlines the decision process for saving for a home purchase, the related behavioral biases, and the intervention to overcome the problem. A randomized control trial design to test the intervention, the considerations and limitations, and other possible solutions will round out the analysis.

Savings Calculator

Nibud developed a savings (‘buffer’) Calculator to provide Dutch households a general idea of the amount of money similar households have in their savings accounts. Households’ saving patterns have also been examined.

Competences for financial empowerment

According to Nibud, a person is financially empowered if he makes well-considered choices in such a way that his finances are balanced, both in the short and long term. Financial education is aimed to increase someone’s financial competences.

To make useful products for financial education, this requires a general description and elaborated support for the competences.

These competences form the basis of Nibud’ s information and recommendations to all consumer groups. In addition, the competences are also ready for use in the professional field. The competences have been elaborated in such a way that it is easier to use them to define how well a person is able to manage his finances.

Financial attitudes and skills as early-warning signs of financial problems

Research by Tamara Madern & Anna van der Schors

On at least one occasion in 2011, nearly half of all Dutch households failed to pay a bill on time, were unable to withdraw money from a bank account, had earnings attached or had power cut off. Failure to pay the occasional bill on time is not a serious matter, but if arrears of payment accumulate and people can no longer meet their financial obligations, not only they but also those around them – and ultimately the rest of society – will suffer.

It is therefore important to tackle financial problems as early as possible, and ideally to prevent them from arising in the first place. In order to deal with such problems effectively, we need to know who exactly is involved. Who are the high-risk groups for financial problems?

Course: Managing money

The Nibud-course Managing money has a modular set-up and thus can easily be adapted to the needs of your participants. In the teachers manual you will read how this can be done. Furthermore you will find a commentary of all separate modules. The commentary always consists of the aim of the module, extra exercises and background information. All modules are also available in English, please contact our office for more information.

Budget form

Nibud has developed the Budget form for use by mortgage-advisors. The form can be printed and handed out to clients. By filling out this form, it becomes clear what the effects are on household finances when selecting various types of mortgages. The form has been developed for use in the Netherlands and is not applicable to other countries.

Intermediate vocational students and money

This study looks at the financial behaviour of intermediate vocational education (middelbaar beroepsonderwijs or MBO), students: their income, expenditure, saving patterns and debts, and how they manage money. The study is representative of the Netherlands.

International projects

Nibud participates regularly in international projects. Some examples:

Study on access to comprehensive financial guidance for consumers (2016, in progress)

Led by the Observatoire de l’ Epargne Européenne (OEE)  in partnership with:

• the Personal Finance Research Centre (University of Bristol –United Kingdom)
• The institute for financial services e.V. (Germany)
• the National Institute for Family Finance Information (The Netherlands)
• RMIT University (Autralia)

Reference budgets for social inclusion (2008-2009 and 2014-2015)

The transnational project ‘Standard Budgets’ aimed to develop and strengthen the instruments that are needed to (better) use Reference Budgets. The project was supported by the EU-Commission under its PROGRESS programme and run from January 2008 until December 2009.

Under the project, reference budgets were developed budgets in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Spain, Finland and Germany. For more information: referencebudgets.eu

ABACO (2009-2011)

The European funded Abaco-project aimed to perform a strategy to face the problem of lack of financial education for vulnerable adults and migrants in South Europe. Target of the project was vulnerable people. The project had a direct impact on their lives since it helped them to make better financial provision for unforeseen situations, invest wisely, and avoid the pitfalls of payment fraud.

The project strived to adapt methodologies and contents developed by Nibud in order to make them usable by partner organizations in their national contexts (Italy, Spain Portugal and Greece).

International networks

Nibud is a member of some international networks.

International Network on Financial Education (INFE)

Nibud is an ‘affiliate member’ of the International Network on Financial Education (INFE). More than 170 organisations (NGO’s) from 86 countries take part in this OECD-network. Its goal is to promote and facilitate international cooperation between policy makers and other stakeholders in the area of financial education.

European Consumer Debt Network (ECDN)

ECDN brings together a broad range of actors in the fight against and prevention of over-indebtedness and promoting financial inclusion, who are active in:

• Debt advice/debt regulation
• Financial literacy programmes and projects
• Development and provision of adequate financial services for excluded people
• Research on over-indebtedness and financial inxclusion

The network provides different platforms for information exchange and effective interaction on legal, economic and social matters in the field of consumer debt and of financial resilience.

Finance Watch

Nibud is associate member of Finance Watch. Finance Watch is a European NGO founded in reaction to the last financial crisis, when policymakers realised that there was no counter-power to the lobby of finance.

We are an organisation of non-profit members from Europe and beyond. Our strength is our team, partly composed of ex-finance professionals which allows us to challenge the financial lobby’s fallacious technical arguments. We defend the public interest in the making of financial regulations.

Our members include organisations and expert individuals from a dozen different countries. They meet regularly to coordinate actions on financial reform.

In late 2017, we introduced a new category of Associate Members: civil society organizations and expert individuals who work with us to make finance serve society but, unlike Full Members, do not take part in the governance of the association.