Studently

Home
Budget
Learn
Profile

Inspiration

As university students ourselves, we saw the same problem everywhere students stressing about money with no tools that actually fit their lifestyle. Existing finance apps like Mint or YNAB are built for adults with steady salaries, not students juggling part-time jobs, allowances, and splitting dinner bills five ways.

We also noticed international students face an extra layer of difficulty managing money in a foreign currency while still thinking in their home currency. We wanted to build something that felt native to the student experience from day one.

What it does

Studently is a personal finance app built specifically for students. It helps you:

Track expenses & income with category tagging (food, transport, entertainment, etc.) Set monthly budgets per category with real-time progress tracking Split bills with friends and share breakdowns via iMessage View spending insights with charts showing trends by week, month, or semester Get a Financial Health Score — a custom 5-factor algorithm that grades your financial wellness from 0–100 based on:

where $B$ = budget adherence, $S$ = savings progress, $T$ = tracking consistency, $D$ = spending diversity, and $E$ = engagement

Learn financial literacy through 6 built-in topics and an interactive quiz Earn achievements — 15 unlockable badges that gamify good money habits Switch between 5 currencies (CAD, USD, EUR, INR, PKR) — designed with international students in mind

How we built it

Studently is a 100% native iOS app with zero external dependencies:

SwiftUI for the declarative UI with custom animations, spring physics, and haptic feedback SwiftData for on-device persistence using the @Query macro for real time reactive updates Swift Charts for spending trend visualizations and category breakdowns Custom design system hand-built gradients, card components, bounce button styles, and animated progress rings The entire app runs locally on-device. No backend, no API calls, no account creation — just open and start tracking.

Challenges we ran into

Multi-currency reactivity — When a user changes their currency, every single view in the app needs to update instantly. SwiftUI's static variables don't trigger re-renders, so we had to architect a solution using UserDefaults backed by @AppStorage to make currency changes propagate reactively across all screens.

Financial Health Score design — Building a scoring algorithm that's fair to students (not adults) was tricky. A student spending 90% of their $500 allowance is very different from an adult spending 90% of a $5,000 salary. We iterated on the weighting multiple times.

Scope management — We originally planned authentication and cloud sync, but made the strategic call to cut those features and invest that time into polishing the core experience — better animations, more achievements, and a complete learning center.

Animation choreography — Getting staggered card entrances, animated counters, confetti celebrations, and spring-based interactions to feel polished (not chaotic) required careful timing coordination.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Full-featured app in hackathon time — Dashboard, budgeting, bill split, insights with charts, health score, achievements, learning center with quizzes, and 5-currency support

Zero external dependencies — Pure Apple frameworks, App Store ready

The Financial Health Score — A genuinely useful 5-factor algorithm that gives students personalized, actionable feedback

International student focus — Currency switching that works everywhere instantly, not just a settings page afterthought

The polish — Haptic feedback, spring animations, gradient theming, and empty states that actually feel considered

What we learned

SwiftData is powerful but new — The @Query macro makes reactive data elegant, but documentation is still sparse. We learned a lot by experimenting.

Design is a feature — Spending time on micro-interactions (bounce buttons, animated counters, confetti) dramatically changes how the app feels, even if the functionality is the same.

Cut ruthlessly, polish deeply — Dropping auth let us ship a tighter, more impressive product. Scope discipline is a skill.

Students need different tools — The financial advice and scoring that works for adults doesn't translate. Designing for students meant rethinking assumptions from scratch.