Centsi Financial App

Inspiration

Budgeting is hard and it is really easy to think of simple purchases like a cup of coffee as miniscule, but those things should also be budgeted for! Budgeting isn't only about not buying things you don't need, but also getting things you already want for cheaper if possible.

What it does

Centsi helps track the user's purchases and keep them within their budget. Users will get special popups by staying under their budget for several consecutive days. This platform also allows the user to keep track of big purchases they want to make. These will act as motivation to stay under their budget. Along with the tracking, the user can chat with our Coach to get more advice on how to stay under their budget.

How we built it

We used Typescript and Node.js for the overall functionality of the application. Clerk was used for authentication for users. Neon and Prisma were used to keep track of users purchases, goals, and weekly budgets. The chatbot is powered by Grok as well.

Challenges we ran into

Initially, we wanted to use Gemini for our Coach, but unfortunately we ran into a lot of quota issues trying to implement it. Eventually, we pivoted to Grok, which happened to fit our goal a little better than Gemini did. We were really aiming for an application that feels more user friendly for an audience of young adults and Grok is really well versed in speaking the language of this age group!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud of building a complete budgeting platform that combines expense tracking, goal-setting, and an AI-powered financial coach. Despite early challenges, we successfully pivoted to a better AI solution that improved the user experience for our target audience.

We also created a user-friendly design tailored to young adults and implemented secure authentication with a scalable database to track spending and goals. Bringing all of these features together into a cohesive product within a limited timeframe was a major achievement for our team.

What we learned

We got more experience setting up a database and using Clerk authentication for security. We also had very little experience setting up something like a chatbot, so implementing that was a first and more difficult than expected!

What's next for Centsi Financial App

In the future, we want to add a location based feature to recommend the user deals that are going on nearby. Things like free food popups or flash sales at local grocery stores would be really awesome to have for the user. We also want to add a chart to represent the user's spending from week to week. Ideally, we would like to collaborate with businesses to get special coupon codes as rewards for users who get really long streaks!

Built With

• clerk
• grok
• neon
• nessie
• node.js
• prisma
• supabase
• typescript