Time2Invest

Most people learn about investing through theory, but we learn best through experience. That's why we made a website that features an investment simulator based on history's biggest financial crises.

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Inspiration

We were inspired by the WEHack "Night at the Museum" theme to bridge the gap between historical financial data and modern habits. Many people find investing intimidating because they fear the "crashes" they’ve heard about, or, in our case, our parents' past financial struggles. We wanted to take those tense historical moments, like the 2008 Housing Crisis or the Dot-com Bubble, and turn them into a safe, interactive laboratory where users can build confidence by "living" through the past.

What it does

Time2Invest is an interactive financial history museum where users step into the shoes of investors during pivotal economic eras. Users are handed a $10,000 simulated portfolio for a specific year, and are presented with real-time historical headlines, and must make ten informed decisions. Afterwards, they can see the impact of their decisions on their portfolio.

What it does

Time2Invest is an interactive financial history museum where users step into the shoes of investors during pivotal economic eras. Users are handed a $10,000 simulated portfolio for a specific year, and are presented with real-time historical headlines, and must make ten informed decisions, like a choose-your-own-adventure book! Afterwards, they can see the impact of their decisions on their portfolio.

How we built it

Frontend: Built with React + Vite for a stylish and clean user interface. Visuals: Tailwind CSS allowed us to create a sophisticated "Museum" aesthetic with a designated color scheme, and Framer Motion handled the smooth transitions. Logic & Data: Supabase handles our user authentication and stores progress, while the GROQ API provides the persona for our historical AI advisor. Data Visualization: We integrated Recharts to visualize how the user's $10,000 would have fared over time based on their historical decisions.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest technical hurdle was making sure everyone was caught up on how to use React and Visual Studio Code. Since most of our team members were unfamiliar with the software, there was a steep learning curve, and a lot of our time was spent resolving errors and learning the basics. Additionally, syncing work between four people on the same project using GitHub proved difficult with the number of commits and changes.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud of our frontend design and coding. Many of us had little to no experience, so creating this new, beautiful site was so much fun and very rewarding! We are also glad that we got to create a tool that will help people learn investing, saving, and financing to build a better and brighter future for themselves. Being able to provide a tool such as this feels incredible for the team!

What we learned

Throughout the development of Time2Invest, we learned that financial literacy is more effective when it is experiential rather than educational. By gamifying history, we saw that users would feel less "guilty" about making mistakes in a simulation. We also deepened our understanding of prompt engineering and managing real-time data visualizations in React!

What's next for Time2Invest

The museum is just opening its first wing. Our next steps include: Multiplayer "Lobbies": Allowing groups of friends to navigate a crisis together to see who survives the volatility best. Direct Integration: Partnering with tools like the Fidelity API to allow users to move from the "Museum" (history) into a "Live Lab" (real investing). New Exhibits: Adding more historical eras, such as the 1929 Great Depression or the more recent 2021 "Meme Stock" era. Possibly also adding a more stable economy exhibit as well to practice during more "normal" times.

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