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AI chatbot example
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Card animation in action shot
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Notification example
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Another type of notification
Inspiration
Many individuals struggle with credit card debt due to overspending. According to a 2023 study by the Federal Reserve, over 60% of Americans carry credit card debt, often because they spend beyond their actual available balance. FinPal is designed to address this issue by keeping users accountable and promoting better financial decisions.
What it does
How it works:
Tracks credit card transactions in real-time Notifies users after every purchase with their remaining monthly budget Includes an AI assistant for personalized financial insights By ensuring users always know how much they have left in their budget, FinPal helps prevent overspending and encourages responsible credit usage.
Features:
Real-time Transaction Tracking via Plaid: Automatically logs credit card transactions. Instant Budget Notifications: Alerts users after every purchase with their remaining budget. AI-Powered Insights: Users can ask an AI assistant about their spending habits and receive actionable financial advice. Customizable Budgeting: Set and adjust monthly spending limits. Secure & Private: Transactions are encrypted and only visible to the user.
How we built it
Frontend: Expo/React Native (for cross-platform mobile development) Backend: Node.js with Express.js AI Assistant: OpenAI API for NLP-based personalized financial insights Financial Data Integration: Plaid API (for securely fetching transaction data) Notifications: Expo Notifications (for push notifications)
Challenges we ran into
Challenge 1: Integrating Plaid Problem: Plaid required a dedicated Node backend for data retrieval and Express as middle-ware between the front-end and back-end. Solution: We opted to use sandbox data provided by Plaid as a proof of concept, which provides direct transaction retrieval.
Challenge 2: OpenAI API Token Problem: It was taking much longer than we're proud to admit to get a response from the API. We kept getting 404 Responses from our queries. Solution: Turns out we didn't have the tier plan for ChatGPT 4o. So we used ChatGPT 3.5-turbo instead.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of our animations, such as the card flip animation, and the fading animation. These provide a sleek and modern UX design.
What we learned
Through this we got a lot more experience on managing full-stack development and taught ourselves most of the frameworks from scratch. This was our first time using React Native, Express, and Node.js.
What's next for FinPal
We plan to continue the development of FinPal, finally integrating the plaid payments with the AI model, allowing for personalized analysis based directly on their spending patterns.
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