FinSmart-The Investment Advisor

Inspiration:

In today’s world, managing money and choosing where to invest is not easy. Many people, especially students and beginners, struggle to plan their finances and often make decisions without enough knowledge. According to the Global Financial Literacy Survey (Lusardi & Mitchell, 2015), only about 33% of adults worldwide understand basic financial concepts. In Pakistan, investment participation is even lower—only about 2.2 people per 1,000 invest in the stock market, and 65% have never bought stocks (IBA, 2022; Rehman & Shah, 2014).

These statistics made us realize that financial awareness is very limited, and most existing platforms are either paid, complex, or unreliable. Inspired by the UN Sustainable Development Goal 1 – No Poverty, we wanted to build something that would help people save and invest wisely, for a stable and secure future. As software engineering undergraduates, we saw this hackathon as an opportunity to make a real difference. We believed that technology could help people understand investments better, and that’s how the idea of FinSmart – The Investment Advisor was born.

What it does:

Our project, FinSmart – The Investment Advisor, is a web-based platform that provides personalized investment recommendations based on a user’s budget, risk level, and investment duration. Users can log in securely, enter their details, and instantly receive smart suggestions on how to divide their money across different options like gold, stocks, real estate, crypto, and savings.

The goal of FinSmart is simple — to make financial planning safe, easy, and accessible for everyone. It helps users who are not familiar with investment concepts to make better choices without needing deep financial knowledge.

How we built it:

At first, we were not familiar with web development frameworks or databases. As software engineering students, we had theoretical knowledge, but we had never built a complete web-based system before. We started by learning step by step through YouTube tutorials, Stack Overflow, and even tools like ChatGPT to understand the structure and logic needed for this project.

We used Next.js as the main framework because it provided us with both frontend and backend capabilities. TypeScript and JavaScript helped us write more stable and manageable code, while Tailwind CSS gave our project a clean and responsive design. For the backend, we used Firebase Authentication for secure login and Firestore Database for storing user information and investment data in real time.

Since real-time financial APIs were mostly paid or restricted, we designed our own calculation model based on risk levels, investment duration, and budget. It calculates how much money should go into each investment category to balance risk and reward. Although it does not yet fetch live data, the logic simulates a realistic allocation process. By working day and night, experimenting, and debugging countless times, we finally built a working system within the hackathon deadline. This experience taught us not just how to build a web app, but how to learn new technologies quickly and solve real problems through programming.

Challenges we ran into:

We faced many challenges during this project. At first, finding free and accurate financial data was extremely difficult. Many APIs required payment, and local investment data was incomplete or unavailable. Integrating Firebase Authentication and Firestore also took a lot of time, especially learning how to securely save and fetch data based on user IDs. We also faced several compatibility issues with Next.js and TypeScript, along with UI responsiveness challenges using Tailwind CSS. Since this was our first time working with these technologies, even small bugs took hours to fix. However, with constant research and help from online communities, we overcame every hurdle one by one.

Accomplishments that we're proud of:

Completing this project within a short time frame is our biggest achievement. We started with zero practical experience in Next.js, TypeScript, or Firebase, and now we can proudly say that we understand how to build a full-stack web application from scratch. Through FinSmart, we not only improved our technical skills but also gained a deeper understanding of financial systems, data structuring, and real-time storage management. Most importantly, we learned the value of teamwork, consistency, and problem-solving — the true spirit of a hackathon.

What we learned:

Our next step is to deploy FinSmart online so that users can access it freely. We plan to connect it with real-time financial data APIs for live stock, crypto, and gold prices. We also want to add portfolio performance tracking and goal-based investment planning, where users can set financial goals and track their progress.

We aim to make FinSmart a complete digital financial assistant that helps people not just plan investments but also develop a habit of saving and financial responsibility. This project has inspired us to continue improving our skills and building solutions that truly make a difference.