MoneyWise

Inspiration

In today's complex economic landscape, access to personalized financial advice remains a privilege often reserved for those with significant wealth. This disparity leaves many individuals, particularly those from lower-middle income backgrounds, without the guidance they need to make informed financial decisions. Furthermore, most online AI advising tools consist of chatting box which makes people feel remote and is complicated for people without experience in computers. Our team recognized the importance of universal access to expert advice and we were inspired to design Moneywise using an email-based platform to make personalized financial guidance more accessible and easier to handle, regardless of their financial background or technological proficiency.

What MoneyWise Does

Moneywise stands out from existing financial management tools by offering a unique combination of convenience, and guidance. By allowing users to create an account through our website and seamlessly connect their bank accounts via Plaid, Moneywise provides a secure and comprehensive view of their financial landscape. This integration ensures that the advice provided is based on real-time, accurate financial data while securing private financial data.

What truly sets Moneywise apart is its user-friendly interface and communication method. Users can simply send an email to Moneywise's dedicated email with their financial questions, and receive tailored advice in response. This email-based interaction eliminates the need for complex app navigation or time-consuming phone calls, making financial guidance more accessible than ever before. Users can also look for the specific email sequence to retrieve their history data or advice received, which is more efficient than searching in a website.

How we built it

MoneyWise is a full stack application that is built to send and receive emails. On the frontend, we are using React, Auth0, and Plaid. On the backend, we built a REST Python, FastAPI, MongoDB, Plaid, and Amazon SES.

Challenges we ran into

During the development of this project, we planned on creating a download button to download a CSV/Excel file that had a breakdown of all of the financial accounts that a user had connected. We were not able to get this done because we had run out of time and had a few challenges with pulling data from the Plaid API.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are most proud of the fact that we were able to integrate an AI chatbot into email. This was very challenging and we are proud that we were able to get it done.

What we learned

We learned a lot about the integration of Plaid and how their API works. It was difficult to get it working in the beginning, but after a while it started to make sense and we were able to get the financial connections working.

What's next for MoneyWise

In the future, we would like to add more features to MoneyWise such as the ability to set financial goals and budgets. We would also like the ability to integrate into more systems.