RoomieLoot

RoomieLoot is a gamified budgeting app for roommates. Users compete in "rooms" with points and leaderboards while learning real financial skills through AI-powered tips and bank account integration.

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Inspiration

The inspiration for RoomieLoot came from a simple observation: traditional budgeting apps are boring, confusing, and often messy. As college students, we’ve seen how hard it is to stay motivated when managing money feels like homework. We wanted to make personal finance more engaging and approachable by turning it into something competitive, fun, and rewarding.

What it does

RoomieLoot is a gamified financial management platform that makes budgeting feel like a game.

  • Users compete against peers to see who manages their money most efficiently.
  • An AI algorithm evaluates each user’s spending behavior, highlights overspending, and provides actionable tips for improvement.
  • The leaderboard is sorted by AI-calculated Budget Efficiency Scores, ensuring rankings are fair and based on meaningful financial habits rather than just who spends the least.
  • Gamification keeps users motivated with XP, levels, badges, and weekly challenges—making smart money management both fun and rewarding.

How we built it

We built RoomieLoot using:

  • Plaid API for secure access to transaction and account data.
  • Next.js + Typescript + and Tailwind CSS for the frontend interface.
  • Flask + Python for backend logic and AI-driven analysis.
  • MongoDB + Prisma for authentication, user data, and leaderboards.
  • Gemini 2.5 Flash for AI-driven financial analysis and personalized recommendations.

Challenges we ran into

  • Learning Git — version control gave us a ton of trouble throughout development, especially with merges and keeping everyone’s code in sync.
  • Pairing MongoDB with our code — making sure that when a new user signed up, the database correctly generated and stored their user variables was more complex than expected.
  • Integrating Plaid Sandbox — we had to develop scripts to ensure Plaid’s financial data came back in a format that was actually readable and usable in our application, particularly for our AI agent.
  • Authentication struggles — we initially tried to use OAuth but ran into problems, so we pivoted to a simpler authentication flow.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Successfully implementing the Plaid API to fetch realistic financial data to be read by our AI agent
  • Building a polished gamification loop (XP, levels, badges) that motivates users.
  • Delivering a clean, intuitive UI that makes budgeting exciting.

What we learned

  • How to integrate financial APIs like Plaid in real-world applications.
  • The importance of fair scoring algorithms when introducing competition.
  • How gamification psychology can drive user engagement.
  • Effective teamwork under hackathon deadlines.

What's next for RoomieLoot

  • Expanding gamification with seasonal challenges, AI-based team competitions, and global leaderboards.
  • Adding custom financial goals so users can compete on their own terms.
  • Enhancing the AI to provide deeper, more personalized financial insights.
  • Exploring real-world incentives like discounts or perks for consistent high scorers.

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