InvestEd

InvestEd helps professionals turn $500/month into over $100,000 in as little as 10 years. Learn compounding fast with our interactive simulator and see your money grow faster than you think!

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Inspiration

As young people, we’re constantly told to “start saving early,” but very few tools help us visualize why that advice is so important. We were inspired to create an interactive financial literacy simulator that makes the concept of compound interest tangible—especially for kids and teens. By connecting things like starting investment, interest rate, and years invested to a graph, we hoped to show how small decisions made early in life can lead to massive results later on.

What it does

InvestEd is an interactive simulator that shows users how their money can grow over time thanks to compounding. Users can input their starting investment, interest rate, years invested, and compounding frequency to see a real-time graph of exponential growth. There’s also an educational page that explains compound interest with emoji-enhanced tips and visual callouts.

How we built it

We used React to build the front-end interface and SVG graphics to dynamically render the graph without relying on external chart libraries. Here’s our tech stack:

  • React for interactive UI and state handling
  • Vanilla JavaScript for calculating compound interest
  • SVG for custom graph rendering
  • CSS for styling and layout
  • Markdown-based educational content to teach financial literacy

Challenges we ran into

  • Styling and layout glitches: Making the simulator both functional and beautiful took many iterations. Balancing readability with interactivity was a challenge.
  • Math accuracy and graph scaling: Ensuring the compound interest formula behaved as expected across different values—especially edge cases—required extra planning and testing.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Successfully built a dynamic SVG graph from scratch in React.
  • Translated a complex financial concept into an interactive and user-friendly learning tool.
  • Created an educational experience that’s both informative and fun, especially for younger users.

What we learned

  • How to create dynamic SVG graphs in React.
  • How to simplify complex financial concepts into bite-sized, interactive lessons.
  • The importance of clean UI/UX in making educational tools approachable and effective.
  • That financial literacy doesn’t have to be boring—it can be fun and engaging with the right design.

What's next for InvestEd

  • Add personalized goal tracking so users can see their progress over time.
  • Implement different investment scenarios (e.g., risk levels, market downturns) for more realistic simulations.
  • Develop a mobile-friendly version for learning on the go.
  • Partner with educators to bring InvestEd into classrooms and help more students build financial literacy.

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