Behind Tu Dau podcast: how RMIT students are making money easier to talk about

For many young people, managing a first salary or deciding how much to spend and save comes before they feel ready. These uncertainties inspired a group of RMIT students to start Richie – Your Money Mate, a student-led financial education initiative funded by RMIT Student Leadership & Development Program under the Leadership with Action Micro-grant.

The team wanted financial learning to feel less like another classroom lesson and more like something young people could experience. From the beginning, Richie connected financial knowledge with opportunities to practise decisions and apply what they learned.

Richie’s Enrich! board game brought that approach to life. Players make decisions about earning, spending, saving, and investing, aiming to balance net worth with happiness. Through gameplay, they experience the trade-offs behind financial choices rather than simply searching for one right answer.

Richie then brought Enrich! into its Own Your Money Game workshops, combining gameplay with insights from finance professionals. With support from the micro-grant, the team developed its game sets and workshops, reaching more than 220 young people across six workshops so far, including over 60 RMIT students. 83% of participants said they left with a clearer picture of personal finance.

As Richie grew, the team began asking how these conversations could reach beyond the game table. They had helped students practise financial decisions, but what if students could also learn from how others had navigated those choices in real life? That question inspired their next experiment: Từ Đâu, Richie’s personal finance podcast.

When developing Từ Đâu, the team wanted conversations they would genuinely listen to themselves, rather than another podcast telling young people what to do with their money. Meaning “Where to Begin”, Từ Đâu podcast brings Richie’s “by young people, for young people” approach into a new format. As RMIT students and alumni, the team shapes each episode around questions they genuinely want to ask, exploring earning, managing, protecting, and growing money through lived experiences.

The team also brought Enrich! into the recording studio. As hosts and guests play together, a decision on the board can spark a story about someone’s uncertainties, what they considered, and what they learned. Hearing someone else’s experience does not necessarily tell listeners which decision to make, but it can help them see their own situation from a different perspective.

These conversations help bridge generations, making money easier to discuss without turning it into a formal lesson. They remind listeners that everyone has their own starting point, and no one has to figure it all out alone.

Creating valuable educational content is one challenge. Convincing young people to choose it over endless entertainment is another.

As young people themselves, the team knows that finding financial education useful does not always mean making time for it. A short video might catch someone’s attention, but encouraging them to explore a longer conversation requires a stronger reason to care.

“The challenge is not simply to make financial topics shorter. It is to help someone recognise why a conversation matters to them, while giving them a reason to explore the full story. That’s what we’re working towards with Từ Đâu,” said Dan Dung Nguyen, Từ Đâu Project Lead.

On Instagram, Từ Đâu’s primary social platform, the team turns podcast discussions into short videos, relatable questions, and bite-sized insights.

Each format offers a different entry point: a video sparks curiosity, a post introduces a perspective, and the full episode tells the story behind it. Beyond visibility, the team hopes to turn that curiosity into trust and meaningful engagement, making financial learning something young people want to return to.

RMIT’s support has accompanied Richie from its early project development to Từ Đâu. Ms Phuong Do from the Student Leadership & Development Program, whom the team fondly calls Richie’s “godmother”, has been with them since day zero, asking the questions that helped a handful of activities grow into a project with a clear direction. Today, RMIT Student Life is also helping bring the podcast to the wider university community.

The podcast’s next three episodes explore financial decisions familiar to RMIT students and their families. Episode 3 features an RMIT alumnus reflecting on managing money independently during his exchange semester in Australia. Episode 4 explores financial protection while studying abroad, while Episode 5 introduces a parent’s perspective on investing in a child’s education.

By hearing from alumni and parents, the team hopes students can recognise their own concerns while discovering perspectives they might not have considered before. It is another way Richie keeps developing Từ Đâu: starting with questions close to young people’s lives and creating space for conversations that might not otherwise happen.

Nearly two years in, the team is still exploring the question that brought them together: how can financial learning become more meaningful for young people? From board games and workshops to podcasts and digital storytelling, each step has taught them to listen, experiment and rethink how they connect with their audience.

After all, Từ Đâu is not about having every answer. It is about making the first question a little easier to ask.

Listen to Từ Đâu on YouTube and follow @tudau.podcast on Instagram.

Story by: Dan Dung Nguyen and Tuong Linh, Richie’s Marketing Team. This article does not reflect the views of RMIT Vietnam as an institution.