Money Mania

Inspiration

Our inspiration for this project was this book about index funds one of our group members read over summer. Prior to reading the book, he had knowledge of how index funds were much better, but when talking to some of his friends, they didn't' know much about it. Creating this game provided the opportunity to help educate people about personal finance.

What it does

This game teaches people about personal finance. The user gets a pay check every 2 weeks, and they can also make money manually. Additionally, they manage their bank accounts by varying the amount in their checking and their savings account. In the future, they can make investments into a low, medium and high risk fund which will allow them to manage their money.

How we built it

We built this in Python using PyGame. We split the workload up between the 3 of us and we each taught ourselves and implemented.

Challenges we ran into

None of us have ever participated in a hackathon before so this was a huge learning opportunity. We struggled at the beginning to set up VSCode as there were many random errors we ran into, but once we got started we were able to make good progress. We also struggled with planning as we weren't sure if we were being too ambitious or too conservative.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the fact we have a finished product to show. Earlier in the day, it was looking really rough because it seemed like there was an insurmountable pile of work to complete, but we were able to get it done.

What we learned

We learned that creating a layout in PyGame is not a good choisce at all. We wasted a lot of time trying to format in Pygame which was really inefficient as PYGame is better for games with physics, and ours acts like a web application.

What's next for Money Mania

Money Mania will have expansions in the investments tab as mentioned before, as well as also expenses that will both be scheduled and random. This will force users to manage their money efficiently. Additionally, there will be quests/goals for the user to complete such as collect a certain amount of money or have a certain return percentage in the investments. Completing these goals will give the user raises in their salary and other in-game non-monetary awards.