BrokeMeNot

The All-in-One College Finance Personal Assistant. Includes banking, budgeting, loan finder, course as well financial course work to improve students' financial literacy.

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Inspiration

As high school seniors on the cusp of a new academic journey, we realized the looming academic expenses that are associated with attending college. In order to simplify navigating the maze of college finances we created ‘brokemenot.us’, a website for college students to explore the financial space. We envisioned this tool to alleviate these financial pressures by providing budgeting tools, financial literacy courses/blogs, bank account management, a budgeting system as well as a student loan management/acquisition system.

What it does

‘brokemenot.us’ is a web application that provides college students with a way to manage their finances simply. The application allows students to connect their Capital One account, or create a new one entirely, through the Nessie API. Then through the account information available students are able to view their balance, transactions, and bills. This along with our budgeting/financial management system allows students to easily track their expenditures and see if they stay within their determined budget. Additionally, the app includes coursework in the form of articles and blogs to increase the student’s financial literacy. Finally, there is a student loan finder for the students based on their financial information. While Capital One accounts have an in-built loan option, students also have access to other financial aid methods.

How we built it

For the frontend, we used Taipy, a framework which allowed us to build a website in Python. The framework allowed us to build a very elegant and user-friendly interface. Thanks to the aforementioned framework, we built the backend using Python too. This allowed us to incorporate the powerful APIs of Twilio and Capital One! We were able to embed products from the Google Suite to enhance user experience. We also were able to use a GoDaddy domain to make our site easier to access across the globe.

Challenges we ran into

We had a great deal of difficulty getting accustomed to the Taipy web framework. Taipy allows for robust full stack web development solely in Python, simplifying the development process. However, us being used to traditional development using HTML, CSS, JS, and frameworks such as React, we found it difficult to adopt this new style of working. Firstly, we had to make the decision of using Taipy’s own Markdown for the UI or HTML. Being experienced with HTML, we went with that, but we quickly found that the documentation didn’t include all we needed it to. Furthermore, Taipy, being a framework on the rise, there wasn’t a large community of developers to turn to with questions. However, after much effort, we were able to effectively use the Taipy framework, and we thought it was a great way to have all of our code in one, organized place. We are proud of ourselves for learning a new skill, and we see ourselves using Taipy for future endeavors.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are really proud of what we have accomplished during this hackathon. Firstly, we are proud that we managed to utilize Taipy, a new and unique framework that none of us have ever heard of before. We are proud that we were able to incorporate many additional features such as Capital One and Twilio API! While we have a lot of work to do if we want to perfect our project, we are proud of what we have completed within the given timeframe. And most importantly, we enjoyed every minute of our time on the UPenn campus.

What we learned

Through the past 36 hours, we’ve used several technologies that we previously have not used. We utilized Twilio, Capital One Nessie API, GoDaddy, Taipei as well as GoDaddy. To use these new technologies we had to learn new skills. Solely through the documentation for each, we navigated through its uses and features to produce a complex application.

What's next for BrokeMeNot

Our goal is to make it even more user-friendly for future college-going students. We would like to move away from the embedded Google Suite products to make our site more convenient and interactive. One of our goals going into the website was to incorporate an AI Chatbot of sorts in our website to help guide students searching for resources or options. Additionally, we wish to include AI-generated personal recommendations for the user based on their financial situation. While we did not have enough time to implement it, we would like to implement it in the future.

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