Dashboard
Spend Review
Achievements
Dashboard
Finley

📊 PocketPal – Your AI-Powered Finance Companion

💡 Inspiration

Managing money can be overwhelming, most budgeting apps only show numbers without context, and financial education often feels dry and unengaging. We wanted to change that.

Our inspiration was to create a tool that not only helps people understand their finances but also teaches financial decision-making in a fun, interactive, and intelligent way.

We envisioned a solution that feels less like a spreadsheet and more like a personal coach, one that analyzes your data, gives you actionable advice, rewards your progress, and even lets you learn money skills through play.

🧠 What It Does

PocketPal is an AI-powered personal finance assistant that transforms how users track, understand, and manage their money.

✨ Key Features:

📊 Smart Dashboard: See total expenses, daily spending, and goals at a glance, with AI-generated insights on your financial health.
🧠 AI Financial Advisor (Finley): Ask natural language questions like “How much did I spend on travel?” and get instant, contextual answers and suggestions.
📁 Document Intelligence: Upload payslips or bank statements, PocketPal extracts and analyzes income data automatically.
🎯 Spending Analysis & Budgeting: Get personalized budget recommendations using the 50/30/20 rule and spending trend analysis.
🏆 Gamification: Earn points and level up by forming better money habits, turning saving into a rewarding experience.
🕹️ VR Endless Runner Game: Learn about financial decision-making interactively by answering real-world money questions while playing a fun VR game on Meta Quest.

🛠️ How We Built It

Backend: Python + FastAPI with SQLAlchemy and SQLite for quick prototyping.
Frontend: React 19 + Vite + Tailwind CSS for a responsive and intuitive UI.
AI Layer: Google Gemini 2.0 Flash with a RAG pipeline (Sentence Transformers + FAISS) for contextual question answering.
Gamification Engine: A points and level system rewarding positive financial behavior.
VR Module: Built an endless runner game for Meta Quest where players make financial choices in real time.

We also applied core budgeting math: Needs=0.5×I, Wants=0.3×I, Savings=0.2×I where I = monthly income. This formula powers our AI’s budget recommendations.

🚧 Challenges We Ran Into

⚙️ Integrating RAG with real user data: Combining expenses, goals, and documents into a unified AI context was tricky.
📊 Real-time insights: Ensuring fast and dynamic updates as new data arrived required optimization of queries and vector search.
🥽 VR Development: Since VR was new to our team, building an immersive experience from scratch was a steep learning curve.
⏱️ Time Constraints: Building a full-stack app, AI system, and VR game in just 24 hours pushed us to prioritize and iterate quickly.

🏆 Accomplishments That We're Proud Of

🧠 Building a fully functional AI-powered finance app in 24 hours.
🤖 Successfully integrating RAG + LLM for personalized financial insights.
🥽 Creating a VR financial literacy game, our first hands-on VR project.
🎮 Designing a gamified system that makes saving and budgeting more rewarding.
💡 Delivering a product that feels like a personal financial coach, not just another expense tracker.

📚 What We Learned

How to design context-aware AI assistants using LLMs and vector search.
How to integrate semantic search and real-time analytics in a finance context.
The importance of user engagement through gamification and immersive experiences.
Building and deploying VR experiences, a brand-new skill for our team.
Most importantly, how AI and interactive design can transform something as intimidating as personal finance into something intuitive and enjoyable.

🚀 What's Next for PocketPal

📈 Bank Integrations: Automatically pull transaction data from real accounts.
🤝 Collaborative Budgeting: Enable shared goals and spending tracking for couples, families, or roommates.
📊 Advanced Analytics: Add predictive forecasting and investment planning modules.
🌍 Expanded VR Experiences: Build more interactive financial scenarios from loans and insurance to investment decisions.
📱 Mobile App: Bring PocketPal to iOS and Android for accessibility on the go.