Inspiration
As college students, we understand the challenges of managing finances while balancing the many expenses that come with university life. Budgeting can be especially difficult without accountability or motivation. That’s why we created BuddyBudget, a platform designed to make budgeting more engaging by turning it into a fun, interactive competition among friends. By combining financial responsibility with friendly competition, BuddyBudget helps students stay motivated, build better money habits, and support each other in reaching their financial goals.
What it does
BuddyBudget is a game that allows users to create a character that they must take care of by managing and budgeting their finances responsibly. As users make smart financial decisions, their character grows and thrives. The app also allows users to connect with friends and compete for the #1 spot on the leaderboard based on their budgeting performance. In addition, users can participate in sponsored challenges for a chance to win cash prizes provided by partnering banking companies.
How we built it
We built BuddyBudget using React and JavaScript for the frontend, along with the Plaid API to integrate banking functionality. We began with a prototype designed in Canva, and as a team we implemented the frontend by developing each page from that prototype. Our teammate Nate primarily handled the backend development, including the server logic and MongoDB database integration.
Challenges we ran into
A major challenge we ran into was figuring out how to implement Plaid, a financial technology platform that lets apps securely connect to users’ bank accounts and access financial data with their permission. We also struggled with implementing the backend data infrastructure, specifically setting up MongoDB, handling API requests, and organizing how financial data from Plaid would be securely stored and processed so the app could accurately track spending and update the user’s character and leaderboard in real time.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are very proud that we were able to successfully implement Plaid and integrate it with our database to simulate retrieving real financial data from a user’s bank account. This allowed our application to mimic real-world banking interactions, giving users a more authentic and practical budgeting experience.
What we learned
From this experience, we learned how to integrate third-party financial APIs with our own backend systems, as well as how important secure data handling and collaboration between frontend and backend development are when building real-world financial applications.
What's next for BuddyBudget
In the future, we plan to implement several additional features to further enhance the BuddyBudget experience. One feature we are exploring is a widget that displays your character’s hygiene state directly on your phone’s home screen. This would provide users with a quick and convenient way to check their spending habits at a glance, since the character automatically changes based on their purchases and financial behavior. We also plan to make the character’s hygiene state more visually expressive by adjusting facial expressions and overall appearance based on the user’s budget status. This creates a more exaggerated and engaging metaphor for a person’s financial health. Additionally, we hope to introduce an in-game currency that users can earn by maintaining healthy spending habits. This currency could be used to unlock advanced character customizations, allowing players to upgrade and personalize their characters as a reward for responsible financial behavior.
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