PennyWise

Inspiration

We got inspiration from exploring the Wise website, the gold sponsor of this year's hackathon event. We also talked to the Wise Mentors and learnt that Wise doesn't have a budget tracker feature so we decided to build on that idea. Our goal is similar to that of Wise, as we want to make managing money more transparent, accessible, and simpler to everyone.

This pushes us to think about the financial challenges that are faced by students and young adults, more specifically budgeting, splitting bills, managing shared expenses. We want to create something that brings those features together in one platform. That's how PennyWise works, a financial tool to help you spend smarter.

What it does

PennyWise is a financial management tool designed to help young adults to take charge of managing their money without juggling between apps. PennyWise has incorporated these features:

Budget tracker: record expenses, organize spendings, and understanding where your money goes Deals/rewards: discover discounts and cash back opportunities Trip/goals: encourage users to plan and save ahead towards exciting experiences such as holidays Shared home: help organise shared household expenses such as rent, utility bills, and groceries Money owed: easier to keep track of money borrowed between friends

How we built it

We started by brainstorming ideas as a team, discussing the financial challenges faced as a young adult. We then narrowed down ideas to the features that would be the most useful and achievable in the hackathon's timeframe.

We began building our website via VS Code, where we generated and developed the initial code and website structure. Throughout the development process, we use GitHub Copilot to help us with coding and navigating the technical aspects of building the website. We use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to build the interactive website.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges we faced was that none of us had much experience in building a website or using AI tools to assist with coding. At the beginning, we were unsure of where to start or what the workflow would look like.

Learning how to navigate VS code and GitHub Copilot was a challenge itself but we quickly realised that we still needed to understand how different parts of the website worked together. However, we managed to approach this challenge as a team through trials and errors as well as researching solutions.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The accomplishment that we are proud of is that we managed to turn an idea into a functioning and interactive website with such limited prior experience. Another achievement was learning how to navigate VS code and GitHub copilot. Most importantly, we are proud of how we worked as a team, troubleshooting, researching, and tackling new challenges.

What we learned

We learned how to use AI tools to help us build a website with limited coding experience. We discovered that AI is at most useful when paired with human creativity and curiosity as well as teamwork. This experience has taught us that to persist through a challenge, we can turn ideas into reality.

What's next for PennyWise

Our next step is to turn PennyWise from a prototype into a fully functioning platform. Ultimately, we want to incorporate PennyWise into an everyday financial tool that helps everyone navigate their finances.