DebtStar

Company Logo
Reason to build DebtStar
Login/Sign up screen
Smart spending
Debt Annihilator
Add bank account screen with Plaid.
Using Plaid on our app.

Inspiration

Student and consumer debt is a huge problem. Like any problem we believe the first step to solving it it understanding how it works.

What it does

We created the Debt Star in order to help people understand their spending and visualize how altering their habits a little can translate into big savings for their debts in the future.

How we built it

We used the Plaid platform to securely connect users to their bank accounts. Firebase for our user authentication and storage and a Python Flask server for backend functionality. All this is shown to the user via a interface built on Vue with Google Material design standards

Challenges we ran into

So much to build so little time… Our team is very passionate about this project. We had to narrow down our ideas in order to meet the hackathon deadline. We were also new to some of the technology like Firebase and Plaid.

Coming up with the algorithm for projecting the time value of money added to your payments
Displaying the data in a clean, easily digestible format
CORS! : (
Wandering around San Francisco looking for internet after 9:00pm

Accomplishments that we're proud of

As a team we have learned and grown a lot over the last two days. We faced the challenges of learning and implementing new things, solving problems and receiving tough feedback.

We are proud of the mission of our project. We strongly believe that no one should have to live under the weight of a huge student loan or pile of debt. We hope that we can continue to grow our app and maybe next year you will see DebtStar in TechCrunch on startup ally!

What we learned

Having a small team we were forced to take on roles that we usually do not fill. We learned about creating an understandable UX without the help of a dedicated UX designer. We did this by asking for A LOT of user feed back. We also learned about creating unique users with Firebase in order to set up their dedicated accounts.

What's next for DebtStar

Add machine learning to suggest areas to reduce spending. By analyzing a users monthly spending we want to be able to suggest spending slightly less in one area and using that excess money to further pay down their debt.

Add the ability to make payments from within the app. By enabling users to make an extra payment without leaving the app, we increase the likelihood that they will make that payment and get out from under debt sooner.

Add the same type of analysis we have for debt reduction to savings. We not only want to be able to help users get out of debt in a smart way. By showing users what savings tool will help them gain the most long term wealth we take them from debt to prosperity within one app.

Add iOS and Android support. By allowing users to access their data on the fly and see what their money could go towards we can help them achieve their goals sooner.