Inspiration
For most students across America, financial literacy is a topic hardly touched on in our education system. This leaves students unprepared to manage their own finances as young adults once they leave high school. Money can be an intimidating topic. Our project Seedling is a gentle and effective tool to introduce young adults to financial literacy.
Before we began creating our application we took a step back to ponder our own financial backgrounds and considered what types of tools would have improved our own financial journeys. We considered creating a game to teach students about the different types of assets and loans in an engaging manner. As we swapped ideas and stories we came across a common denominator that impacted our lives more directly which was the topic of budgeting.
What it does
Seedling is loan comparison tool that calculates a budget for the user from income and demographic data and uses statistical algorithms to rank their loan or scholarship matches from best to worst Then it gives the user a recommended monthly budget and calculates the percentage of their budget that goes towards the loan. Additionally we'll also provide estimates on how long it’ll take to pay off the loan.
How we built it
We designed templates in figma and used apps such as inkscape and canva to hand draw the logo and graphics, and React.js to render the webpage. As managing your own finances can be a generally stressful topic, we chose a deliberate palette of calming colors in our design. In nature and mythology a lotus is a symbol of prosperity and growth. As the user explores our app, they see a visual of a lotus blooming to represent their flowering knowledge in the field of finances
Challenges we ran into
One thing we struggled on is incorporating a more technical aspect to our project. For two team members this was our first hackathon, and for all four of us this was our first experience with web development or this stack. However given more time we’re confident we could’ve completed implementing a fully functioning website. We would’ve also loved to incorporate some real data sets and real statistical algorithms to better refine our product.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We’re most proud of our visuals. Some of our team members pulled an all-nighter trying to get the details of our project just right. We did extensive research to consider everything from the color choice, accents and symbolism of the lotus.
What we learned
Coming from different backgrounds and experience levels one of the most important things we learned was how to succeed together as a team.
What's next for Seedling
In the future we would expand our product and work with companies to create scholarships for students exclusively through our app.
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