This is what we envisioned our GUI to look like if we had enough time to complete it.

Inspiration

When taking math class in the senior years of high school I found it difficult to solve certain problems with compound interest. That was me as a high school student with lots of math experience. Now imagine someone with little math experience and new to adulthood looking for an investment opportunity. They would have to clue what any of the complex terms and formulas mean that are related to compound interest. They would be overwhelmed and discouraged from investing at all. This situation made us all want to create some sort of program that guides people through the process of making a GIC investment and predicting how much they'll receive from the investment.

What it does

Our code takes the user's yearly income and makes a suggested investment amount based on it. They are offered the option of making our suggested investment or a custom one. Then they are asked how long they wish to make this investment for. Based on their answers for the investment amount and time for the investment an interest rate similar to one offered by big Canadian banks is generated. Then using this rate the final investment amount and how much they will profit is calculated. In addition to this there is a website that talks about financial literacy and gives definitions for any terms related to compound interest rates. This allows users to fully understand what they're doing and how compound interest rates work.

How we built it

We used python to code the compound interest calculator and wix to create the website.

Challenges we ran into

We had a slow start as we couldn't get github working. Eventually after we got it figured out things were going well. The code came together and so did the website. Eventually once it came time to link the two together more problems arose. We couldn't find a way to have an executable code that ran on anyone's computer. We made a .exe file but due to an error in much antivirus software, it is detected as suspicious files and possible malware, even though it isn't. Because our website development software isn't compatible with .py files (python) or .exe files (executable), we were forced to put the link to our GitHub with the python code to our calculator on it, so the user can extract and run the file from there.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're very proud that we made a properly functioning compound interest calculator. Our team has minimal experience with python and almost none with web development, so it was great that we were able to pull it off.

What we learned

We learned lots about python. We significantly improved our skills using multiple functions in python and how to solve complex math problems with python. In addition, we learned how to build a website using wix.

What's next for Probable Investment Calculator

In the future we plan on implementing the option for the user to choose a more desirable final amount of profit if they wish, and then isolating the remaining variables, being time elapsed during investment and primary investment value, so that the user can choose which one to change in order to adapt to their desire final profit amount, after the duration of their investment has been completed. We also plan on creating a small loan program using a similar compound interest calculation code, except with lower rates, keeping the yearly income of the user in mind.