Girl Math

🚧 The Problem

Women are too often stereotyped as “bad with money” and judged for their financial choices. Reality check: women+ are actually more likely to save than men ([Fawcett Society]).

But a trust gap exists — 38% of Canadian women admit they know “very little” about finance (Richard Wilson Wealth) and doubt they’ll get reliable advice. Only 42% feel confident saving for milestones (Fidelity). Biases, clichés, and patronizing advice keep women from reaching their goals.

Girl Math was built to flip the script — giving women+ a safe, playful space to track savings, set goals, and talk to an advisor who actually listens.

💡 The Solution

Girl Math is a fun, shame-free budgeting app that turns everyday choices into wins.

Goal Creator: Set any goal — from a new purse to a tropical trip.
Free Money Tracker: Log skipped purchases or surprise savings as “free money.” Saving feels like a game, not a sacrifice.
Instant Reallocation: Move that money into categories like Savings, Gifts, Treat Yourself, or custom goals.
AI Chatbot (Gemini): Your non-judgmental financial BFF, available 24/7. It explains budgeting in plain language, - suggests challenges, and adapts to your habits. Why it’s different: No shame, no mansplaining. Just empathy, gamification, and progress — one skipped latte at a time.

⚔️ Challenges

Training Gemini AI to be accurate, safe, and approachable.
Designing a MongoDB schema for complex but fast queries.
Making our React 19 frontend play nicely with the backend API.
Rewriting big chunks of the frontend to ensure compatibility.
Debugging countless mobile issues, mismatched dependencies, and broken flows.
Wrestling with dependency conflicts across Expo, RN, and libraries.
Learning Figma and V0 for the first time while building under pressure.

🏆 Accomplishments

Built a full end-to-end mobile app: React Native frontend, Node/Express backend, MongoDB Atlas, Gemini AI
Integrated Gemini API to serve as an AI, on-demand financial advisor that feels supportive and safe.
Designed a clean, scalable db schema for transactions and piggy banks.
Created a playful UX with piggy banks, confetti, and gamified savings.
Overcame tool, merge, and dependency conflicts and shipped a working demo
Grew as a team — first time with Figma, V0, and React 19.

📚 What We Learned

REST API structure in NodeJs and ExpressJs
How to design UI/UX in Figma
How to model NoSQL data for relational-like structures.
The real grind of frontend–backend alignment.
Debugging at scale without losing our minds.
How to engineer AI prompts that are safe and useful.
Why accessibility, tone, and visuals matter in finance. Above all: resilience — rewriting, troubleshooting, and adapting nonstop.

😎 What’s Next

Bank Integration — auto-detect e-transfers and other sources of “free money” from accounts.
Spending Insights — smart graphs and monthly summaries.
Customization & Languages — themes, icons, multi-language support.
Financial Education — bite-sized tutorials and mini-guides.
AI-Generated Icons — unique goal visuals powered by Gemini.
Community & Social — cheer each other on and normalize talking money.