Spend 2 Save

Inspiration

As university students, emergency funds may not be on the top of our priority list however, when the unexpected happens, we are often left wishing that we had saved for an emergency when we had the chance. When we thought about this as a team, we realized that the feeling of putting a set amount of money away every time income rolls through may create feelings of dread rather than positivity. We then brainstormed ways to make saving money in an emergency fund more fun and rewarding. This is how Spend2Save was born.

What it does

Spend2Save allows the user to set up an emergency fund. The user inputs their employment status, baseline amount and goal for the emergency fund and the app will create a plan for them to achieve their goal! Users create custom in-game avatars that they can take care of. The user can unlock avatar skins, accessories, pets, etc. by "buying" them with funds they deposit into their emergency fund. The user will have milestones or achievements for reaching certain sub goals while also giving them extra motivation if their emergency fund falls below the baseline amount they set up. Users will also be able to change their employment status after creating an account in the case of a new job or career change and the app will adjust their deposit plan accordly.

How we built it

We used Flutter to build the interactive prototype of our Android Application.

Challenges we ran into

None of us had prior experience using Flutter, let alone mobile app development. Learning to use Flutter in a short period of time can easily be agreed upon to be the greatest challenge that we faced.

We originally had more features planned, with an implementation of data being stored using Firebase, so having to compromise our initial goals and focus our efforts on what is achievable in this time period proved to be challenging.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This was our first mobile app we developed (as well as our first hackathon).

What we learned

This being our first Hackathon, almost everything we did provided a learning experience. The skills needed to quickly plan and execute a project were put into practice and given opportunities to grow. Ways to improve efficiency and team efficacy can only be learned through experience in a fast-paced environment such as this one. As mentioned before, with all of us using Flutter for the first time, anything we did involving it was something new.

What's next for Spend2Save

There is still a long way for us to grow as developers, so the full implementation of Spend2Save will rely on our progress. We believe there is potential for such an application to appeal to its target audience and so we have planned projections for the future of Spend2Save. These projections include but are not limited to, plans such as integration with actual bank accounts at RBC.

Built With

• dart
• flutter