FinAi

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Inspiration

Every month, we and our friends ended up broke without really knowing where the money went. Manual expense tracking apps felt like homework, and most finance tools only showed charts without explaining behavior. FinAi was born from this frustration — an AI companion focused on helping students understand why they overspend, not just how much.

What it does

FinAi is an AI-powered personal finance app for students. It automatically reads transactions, detects hidden subscriptions, and calculates a single intuitive “Can I spend?” number to guide daily decisions.

Beyond tracking, FinAi generates behavioral insights, including:

Weekend spending spikes

Stress-driven purchases

Social and peer-influenced spending patterns

The app also offers:

A clean dashboard with category-wise charts

One focused savings goal

A financial health score

A monthly runway estimate

Dark mode for better usability

How we built it

We built a working prototype in a 4-day hackathon using:

Next.js for the frontend

Tailwind CSS for styling

Recharts for data visualization

localStorage for a fast, backend-free demo

A lightweight API route sends cleaned transaction data to a large language model (LLM), which returns structured behavioral insights. We split responsibilities across AI prompting, behavioral detectors and formulas, and UI/UX demo flow to deliver an end-to-end experience within a tight timeline.

Challenges we ran into

Our biggest challenge was scoping — real bank integrations were not feasible within hackathon constraints. Another major challenge was getting the AI to produce specific, actionable insights instead of generic financial advice.

Through prompt iteration, we learned how to guide the model toward behavior-level explanations rather than surface-level summaries.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Built a complete, functional prototype in under four days

Designed a clear and intuitive “Can I spend?” metric

Generated behavioral insights instead of just visual charts

Delivered a polished UI and smooth demo experience

What we learned

Students value low friction and clarity more than complex financial theory. A single, actionable answer combined with behavioral nudges is far more impactful than traditional budgeting tools.

What's next for FinAi

Real bank and UPI integrations

Smarter behavioral models using longer spending histories

Personalized nudges based on stress, exams, and social patterns

Gamified savings and accountability features