Investing with your DUO loan

Investing with your DUO loan

Borrowing maximum money from DUO and investing it? Unwise and undesirable, according to Minister Van Engelshoven, but she does not see any point in banning it. The CDA asked the minister questions about an article (Dutch only) by The Financial Student: Getting rich by investing with your DUO loan. Vlogger Roy, a 21-year old student in Rotterdam, calculates that students can borrow a maximum of 66 thousand euros in five years. If they invest that amount completely at an average return of 7 percent, after five years – if all goes well – it will have grown to over 78 thousand euros.

Recent Nibud research (Dutch only) shows that 9 percent of the surveyed students invest their student loans. Exact amounts were not asked for, but in Nibud’s survey among secondary vocational education students, which will be published in November, they are.

Van Engelshoven believes that students should be able to decide for themselves what they spend their money on. Moreover, a ban would be impossible to enforce, “because the government would then have to check for all students what they spend their money on, but also whether they have their borrowed money invested by others who are capable of doing so”. She does want DUO to warn students better about the risks of investing and will also ask the Nibud to pay attention to this issue.

HOP, Hein Cuppen