Budgetify

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Inspiration

The rising cost of living makes financial planning overwhelming, especially for college students. Many struggle with budgeting effectively due to a lack of clear guidance and tools tailored to their unique needs. We wanted to create a solution that simplifies budgeting and helps students make informed financial decisions effortlessly.

What it does

Budgetify is an AI-powered budgeting tool that calculates a personalized budget based on the cost of living in your city, provides a ring chart breakdown of recommended spending categories, identifies unnecessary expenses and suggests cost-saving alternatives, and integrates a chatbot to answer finance-related questions and offer tailored advice.

How we built it

We built the frontend of Budgetify using TypeScript and CSS to ensure type safety, maintainability, and a clean, responsive UI. For the backend, we used Node.js with Express to build a lightweight yet efficient server to handle user requests. We combined MongoDB and Mongoose for a structured and flexible way of storing user data in a database. The AI-powered chatbot was implemented using OpenAI to provide users with personalized financial insights, answering questions about budgeting, identifying unnecessary expenses, and suggesting cost-saving measures.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest hurdles was backend development. In particular, we struggled to setting up a secure form of authentication for users, establishing a smooth database linkage for storing financial data, formatting budget reports in a clear and user-friendly manner, and ensuring seamless chatbot integration for personalized financial advice.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to successfully implement an AI chatbot that provides customized budgeting tips based on the cost of living in the user's area, as well as taking into consideration their monthly income and expenses. We also created an interactive visualization of spending habits, built a tool that directly addresses financial struggles faced by students, and overcame backend obstacles to ensure smooth data flow and secure authentication.

What we learned

In the 24 hours we spent working on this project, we were able to gain valuable experience in API integration for a cost of living analysis, optimizing database structures for financial data management, enhancing AI-driven interactions for improved user engagement, and collaborating efficiently to solve technical challenges under a tight deadline.

What's next for Budgetify

We're excited to take Budgetify to the next level by developing smarter AI suggestions with deeper financial literacy insights, and providing a mobile-friendly version for people who want to budget on-the-go.