Financy

Inspiration

Even as university students, we are still unsure of what the total price of our purchases will actually be before receiving the final number at the till. For a kid who is only given two dollars to buy Elmer’s glue for their slime, the concept of sales taxes can be difficult to grasp, especially when the total ends up to be $2.24, despite only having two dollars.

Financial literacy is crucial in everyday life, so it would be best to start promoting this concept at an early age, around age 10-15. Furthermore, what is the concept of a savings, debit or credit card?

What it does

Financy is a web application that simulates a series of scenarios in which the user can make decisions between choices that are made in every-day purchasing, such as which item to buy. The app shows how sales tax can affect purchases and what debit/credit are. Additionally, Financy provides information on ways to start saving as well as what the implications of saving money are.

How I built it

We built Financy using Javascript for back-end and HTML and CSS for front end. We started off coming up with scenarios and concepts that we want to introduce to our users, such as sales tax, interest rates, debit/credit.

Challenges I ran into

The biggest challenge we ran into was the process of ideation and creating a solid project. We struggled with coming up with a feasible idea to accomplish in 24 hours. However, after hours and hours of brainstorming and critiquing, we finalized on Financy. Another challenge we ran into was getting the code to communicate between back-end and front-end.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

It is all of our first times at a Hackathon, so we are proud that we were able to turn an idea into a program, even if it’s not 100%. Additionally, all of our front-end developers have no experience with front-end, so they had to learn HTML and CSS from scratch, all within 24 hours.

What I learned

The biggest thing we learned was the importance of Google. The skill of being able to problem-solve a code conflict by an internet search is exceptionally important and helpful in a Hackathon, especially since we are all first-timers. Another thing we learned was how difficult the ideation process is, as there are minimal guidelines as to what the topic can be on. We did not expect the ideation process to be the most difficult stage of this project.

What's next for Financy

If we had more time to work on Financy, we would have wanted to implement a selection of different brands for the user to choose from. This can show the importance of substitutes and picking the right brand. Additionally, we would include a section highlighting how investments work and the long-term effects of investing. Furthermore, an additional feature to input and track the actual spending data of the user would be an optimal next-step.