Well Spent

Well Spent Dashboard

Inspiration

Financial apps may help in telling a user where their money is being spent but it never tells them why they spend it that way. Emotions are a bigger factor in driving purchases, things like stress and boredom are major contributors. In fact, 49% of Americans admit that emotions have caused them to make impulsive purchases. We wanted to build something that helps people improve their finances, by first better understanding themselves. This app is designed to over-time, help a user reduce stress and emotion related purchases, and make more optimal financial decisions.

What it does

Tracks in different categories on a day-to-day basis along with a daily survey of the user's wellbeing status and analyzes all the patterns that emerge from the data. Based on the recognized patterns it creates a deeper analysis and steps the user can take to break those bad habits which are leading to excess spending.

How we built it

Frontend: React Native, Expo, TailwindCSS
Backend/Database: Firebase, Cloudflare, Nessie API from Capital One, Gemini
AI Assistance: Cursor and GitHub Copilot.

Challenges we ran into

Connecting our frontend and backend was difficult due to our choice to use a mobile app. Calling our backend was difficult when 2 different devices had to communicate. We were able to overcome this by using Ngrok to create a tunnel.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Developing an elegant frontend that is integrated to our backend and uses Gemini AI to help users with their spending habits and mental well-being. It provides both a financial and wellness score that helps the user understanding how they're doing along with advice that pushes for real action. We built something that goes beyond just finance, something that builds self-awareness.

What we learned

How to ship a product in a short amount of time, how to use AI to enhance our skills, how to use new frameworks, how to think in the user's perspective, how to integrate multiple APIs with each other(Nessie and Gemini).

What's next for Well Spent

Integrating additional wellness information through partnerships with wearable and phone's fitness tracking apps. Adding adaptive language which would try to appeal to how the person is feeling at the time. For example, could have a softer, more encouraging tone when speaking with someone who is feeling down.

The overall vision

This is an app that helps people manage both their emotions and spending. Studies show a strong correlation between emotions and spending, and this app is designed to help people stay financially grounded when feeling down or keep their emotions positive when money is tight.