EconPulse

Inspiration

72% of UK students are financially stressed according to the NUS. I wanted to build something that actually understands student finances - not just another generic budgeting app.

Most apps assume you have a steady salary. Students dont. We get loan payments three times a year, work irregular part-time hours, and have spending patterns that swing massively between freshers week and exam season.

What it does

EconPulse tracks spending against income for UK students specifically. It knows about:

Maintenance loan amounts and payment dates (sept, jan, april)
Realistic cost breakdowns by category (rent, groceries, going out, etc)
Seasonal patterns - freshers spending spikes, christmas travel costs, being skint in january
Plan 2 vs Plan 5 student loan repayment rules

The dashboard shows a health score, flags when youre overspending, and breaks down where your money actually goes.

How I built it

Python with Streamlit for the frontend
Pandas for data handling
Plotly for the charts
Scikit-learn for predictions

Spending figures based on Save the Student and NUS survey data. Loan thresholds from gov.uk.

Challenges

Getting the seasonal spending patterns right was tricky. Had to research actual student behaviour - turns out takeaway spending goes up during exams (nobody wants to cook) and going out drops in january (everyones broke after christmas).

Also the student loan system is genuinely confusing. Plan 2, Plan 5, different thresholds, different writeoff periods. Tried to make that clearer.

What I learned

Streamlit is really good for quick prototypes
UK student finances are more complicated than I thought
The maintenance loan doesnt actually cover costs for most students

Whats next

Open Banking integration for real transaction data or add a pannel so csvs can be added with the info
Notifications when approaching budget limits
Comparison with other students at same uni