MoneyBag

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  Bank

Inspiration

We wanted to engage and educate the next generation of leaders, innovators and visionaries who need guidance to develop financial responsibility. Our mode of captivating and stimulating these young minds is through gaming. We are in a new era that calls for a non-traditional approach to financial education. We intro to MoneyBag, a financial education plug-in that encourages the user to save while building an investment portfolio while having fun doing it.

What it does

MoneyBag is a secure financial education plug-in. We are expanding our partnerships with a number of banks to provide our secure plug-in that links to a user's savings, investment and retirement account. When users make a purchase in the game, rather than paying a gaming company, these funds are redirected to their savings/investment accounts allowing them to continue to build their portfolio. Users are able to determine their saving split ensuring that the money they spend goes towards a brighter future.

How we built it

MoneyBag was built by taking inspiration from a mobile game, Adventure Capitalist, in which you’re investing and constantly growing your capital. We wanted to apply that concept to investing, and turn a fun, slightly-addictive, mobile game into a way to help users save money. From this idea we were determined to find a way to apply it to the banking space as an educational tool for investing. We considered possible constraints such as how we didn’t want it to seem like gambling and how there may be transfer limits set by banks. We also had to brainstorm features that would engage the users and be useful, while keeping the core concept and not overcomplicating the ‘game’. From there we proceeded to write the code for the various functions and create the graphics for the interface. We wanted it to be like nothing else - MoneyBag was built from the ideas of a fun, engaging, and unique method of investment. It had to capture the attention of the user and turn investment of their funds into a fun game. Nobody likes to put away their money, but with this it’s made into a game.

Challenges we ran into

One of the many challenges of this project was the vast variety of skill sets, from novice to full stack developers amongst the team, we all found a way to contribute and succeed within this passion. Agreeing to use Javascript, we all studied vicariously to meet on the same page. One main design flaw we overcame was the possibility of the new generation of investors being overwhelmed with the idea of investing. How could we possibly make investing and saving less of a financial burden? That’s when we stumbled upon rewarding the user with a digital prize and letting them progress in an imaginary space that did not involve any sort of gambling.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Even with all these challenges, we still accomplish to create the foundation of MoneyBag. In a more technical sense, we are proud. In a more general sense, we are proud to have a game that would help the younger generation to redirect their money to their investment account; And most importantly we’re proud of our team collaboration to think outside the box of what financial freedom really means to a user.

What we learned

What we learned was the value of diversity. We all came from various backgrounds and that served as one of the initial roadblocks, we all had different skill sets and it didn’t seem like we were very compatible, but once we all established our skills and threw out ideas we began to brainstorm. We learned that any idea, no matter how silly it may sound, is invaluable to discussion as it can lead to an even better idea which could vastly improve our project. We also learned how to more successfully operate under pressure. Nobody likes a time limit, but we used that as motivation to fuel us to stay focused and generate even more ideas.

What's next for MoneyBag

What’s next for MoneyBag? Expansion beyond our initial scope. We would love to develop more tools to help the next generation invest. Financial stability is a necessity and with our growing economy, it’s important that we continue to save and invest our funds. That’s where we come into place. We strive to develop unique methods of investment that help our users through an engaging, seamless process that also serves to educate the user on the value of financial responsibility.

Built With

• css
• html5
• javascript
• react