Impause

Inspiration

Many people struggle with impulse spending without realizing the long-term effects on their financial well-being. We wanted to create a tool that not only increases awareness but also makes financial responsibility engaging and collaborative. That’s how Impause was born—built to help users pause, reflect, and regain control of their spending habits.

What it does

Impause is a personal finance companion that helps users curb impulse purchases, track spending patterns, and stay financially accountable. Key features include:

Impulse Buying Buffer: A pause mechanism before purchases to reflect on cost, goals, and time value.
Finance Wrapped: A fun, visually rich summary of your weekly, monthly, or yearly spending—like Spotify Wrapped for your wallet.
Accountability Buddy: A feature to pair with a friend to share progress and stay motivated through light social accountability.

How we built it

We used React, Vite, and Tailwind for the front end. We utilized Cloudflare Workers for the backend, and AWS, Node.js, Express, and MongoDB Atlas for authentication.

Challenges we ran into

The main challenge we ran into was trying to integrate authentication in the front end and configuring the firewall.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to deploy a functional web app.

What we learned

Behavioral psychology plays a huge role in financial decisions.
Small UX decisions (like how long to delay a purchase) can significantly impact user satisfaction.
People respond positively to transparency, gamification, and social reinforcement in managing money.

What's next for Impause

Integrating with bank APIs for seamless, automatic expense tracking.
Expanding the Finance Wrapped to include goal tracking and streaks.
Launching mobile notifications and widgets for real-time impulse purchase alerts.