Should I Buy This?

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  Auth

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  Prremium features

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  Delete account

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  Dashboard with saves

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  Features

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  Calculation example

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  Examples

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  Dashboard view

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  Homepage

Inspiration

I wanted to build a tool that helps people make smarter financial decisions in their daily lives. From big purchases to small subscriptions, it’s easy to overspend without realizing the true cost. “Should I Buy This?” was born to empower users to evaluate purchases confidently and avoid buyer’s remorse. I sometimes struggle to see the value of what I buy and this helps me see that.

What it does

Should I Buy This? offers a suite of calculators that help users:

• Analyze cost-per-use of items
• Compare subscription value
• Evaluate loan amortization
• Assess investment ROI
• Decide between rent vs. buy
• Calculate their net worth

My free tier handles everyday decisions, while Premium unlocks saving, tracking, personalized insights, and access to our full library of calculators.

How we built it

We used:

• Vue 3 + Vite for the frontend (lightweight, fast, component-driven)
• Tailwind CSS for clean, minimal styling
• Supabase for auth, user data, and saving calculations
• Stripe Checkout + Netlify Functions to manage premium subscriptions securely
• Netlify for hosting both the app and serverless backend

Challenges we ran into

• Integrating Stripe webhooks with Supabase updates through Netlify Functions required careful signature verification and async logic.
• OAuth using Google and setting up domains and subdomains with Supabase, Google console wasn't as straightforward as I expected.
• Designing a simple UI that could present multiple calculators without overwhelming users.
• Managing time constraints while aiming for both functional depth and polish.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Built a working subscription flow with real payment + entitlement management.
• Delivered a clean, user-friendly interface that judges and users can understand at a glance.
• Created a flexible foundation that can support more calculators and features beyond the hackathon.

What we learned

• The power of combining Supabase + Stripe + Netlify for rapid, secure app development.
• How critical it is to focus on clear UX when dealing with financial tools.
• That simplicity wins — the clearer we made the tool, the better it resonated with he people I shared it with. Including myself.

What's next for Should I Buy This?

• Expand our library of calculators (e.g. carbon footprint, time cost of money).
• Add AI-powered recommendations based on user inputs and spending patterns.
• Build mobile-first optimizations and native app versions. It looks good on mobile but I think it could be better, maybe make an Expo app out of this.
• I might integrate an expense and income tracker, or maybe make a separate app and integrate this one into it. The possibilities are endless.
• Explore integrations (e.g. browser extension, email receipts import).

Built With

• bolt.new
• stripe
• supabase
• typescript
• vue