Centsi

Centsi turns financial literacy into a game with AI coaching, personalized budgets, and achievements designed for students and anyone building money confidence.

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Inspiration

We wanted to make financial literacy something people actually look forward to. Money management is often seen as stressful or boring, which discourages people from learning the skills they need. Our idea was to flip that mindset by bringing in elements of gamification, such as progress tracking, badges, and achievements, so that managing money feels more like playing a game than filling out a spreadsheet. By making the process interactive and rewarding, we aim to help students and anyone interested in improving their finances build healthy habits that last.

What it does

Centsi is an AI-powered finance coach that makes learning money management approachable and fun. Whether you’re a student or anyone looking to build better financial habits, Centsi combines personalized budgets, voice-first coaching, and gamified progress tracking. Unlike traditional expense trackers, Centsi keeps you engaged with achievements, badges, and goals to make financial literacy into a skill you actually enjoy building.

How we built it

Frontend: React + Tailwind, designed for a clean, modern interface with gamified visuals.

Backend: Python with FastAPI to handle budget logic and AI function calls.

AI Coach: ElevenLabs + OpenAI for text-to-speech and voice-first interactions.

Chatbot: OpenAI GPT for conversational financial guidance.

Challenges we ran into

Integrating the Voice AI to have more than one turn of conversation effectively.

Balancing realistic financial data with a simplified, gamified experience.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Built a working prototype with voice-first financial coaching in under 30 hours.

Designed a clean, engaging UI with progress tracking and gamification.

Created tailored experiences for different user types (students, grads, young adults).

What we learned

Integration of AI and voice services into a React/Python stack.

The importance of tailoring user experiences.

Gamification can truly transform engagement in topics that often feel boring or intimidating.

What's next for Centsi

Add PDF bank statement parsing for real account integration.

Integrate financial literacy games into the Learn page of the site.

Partner with schools and universities to roll out as a financial literacy tool.

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