Invest and Rest

Inspiration

Inspiration: Poverty causes stressors such as insecurity and uncertainty about food, housing, and income. Low-income communities tend to have specific characterizations such as limited resources, poor houses, high crime and violence rates, and an inadequate school system, which are all associated with poor mental health outcomes. We want to target low in come communities to teach them about money and give them a jump start to a future life.

What it does

Our application takes in the user’s finances and goals through a form, and then uses the information to display how long it’ll take for someone to pay off their debt and reach their savings goals. The app also gives recommendations when it comes to which stocks to buy.

How we built it

The frontend is built with Velo by Wix and the backend is built with Flask which uses an API by taapi.io for our investment calculations.

Challenges we ran into

On the frontend, one of the few challenges we’ve ran into was figuring out how to fully customize Wix to our liking. On the backend, we’ve struggled with finding an API which displayed projection of stocks, learning to interpret the data from our API, and finally implementing the data successfully in a way which is easy to understand for the user.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

One of the most exciting things that happened during our development was when we finally fully implemented the API with our application. Outside of the app, our division of labor and effective teamwork is one thing to be proud of, as it’s allowed use to maximize both our productivity and communication.

What we learned

We’ve learned about how functional and versatile Wix can be when it comes to styling the website using Velo. We’ve also learned how difficult and even frustrating it can be to find an API which fits our specific needs.

What's next for Invest and Rest

In the future, we would love to fully flesh out our investments with more data to display and utility for our user. One feature in specific would allow us to automate the process of getting the user’s finances through perhaps a bank login, and then automatically invest a set portion of their income to help them reach their goals.