VaultLife

Dashboard For User As They Enter Landing Page

Inspiration

Being an adult is hard, but being an adult in college adds unique challenges that traditional financial tools often ignore. Our inspiration came from the "Raise your hand" moments: the struggle to follow a generic budget, the disconnect felt when taking financial advice from those who aren't students, and the headache of FAFSA calculations.

We realized that students don't just need to track money; they need to understand the opportunity cost of their lifestyle. We wanted to build something for the person debating between two futures—where the "cheaper" option isn't always the one with the lower price tag.

What it does

VaultLife helps students visualize their financial decisions as they happen. It

How we built it

Web-based Technologies Frontend Framework: Next.js Language: TypeScript UI Library: React Styling: Tailwind CSS + shadcn/ui **Backend / Database / Auth: Supabase Charts / Analytics: Recharts Animations: Framer Motion Deployment: Vercel

We utilized Gemini AI for indepth troubleshooting, and Claude AI for structure. We architected the frameworks through heavy iteration.

Challenges we ran into

One of the main problems we ran into was a technical issue having nothing to do with the programming itself but an SSH tunnel issue with our own PC that caused file path issues. A secondary problem we ran into was finding a balance between aesthetics for the UI, functionality, and a truly helpful app for students.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our most proud achievement was how smooth our website runs on railway as well as the indepth cost analysis for between areas with prominent universities/cities. This takes into consideration not just rent cost but travel cost, food cost, and many more important needs that's students need to consider when making a decision to move.

What we learned

Something important we learned is that local machines when you can afford to should be main priority as it solved many of the tunneling/pathing issues that can come from firewalls. This would have saved us over half our time that we could've dedicated to this web app.

What's next for VaultLife

Coming in the future we want to make a cross-platform mobile app for IOS and android that gives the power of controlling your finances tailored to students and young adults wherever they go. This would be even more interactive offering more personalized avatars, characters, level ups and level downs based off whether students make their goals. We want to gamify and make financial literacy fun and accessible at a fair affordable price.