Inspiration
As college students ourselves we find that there is a lot of confusion about not only the loans we've taken but what exactly it will mean to pay them off. By making a college loan calculator that is easy to use and forces you to research your own loans. We're able to make a month by month plan for the student, factoring in the year of the loan taken, type of loan, the interest rate on the loan and the user's expected income.
What it does
This website informs its user to the usually unknown but important facts of student loans, calculates every user's individual loans and formats it into an easy month by month plan. By compiling all of the user's loans and factoring the particulars of each it allows the user to see what paying off their loans would look like. From there we advise the user on what would make their first steps into paying loans easier.
How we built it
We built it by using HTML5, JavaScript and CSS for the front end and algorithm work of the website and then used Node.js and Express on the back end. We used both the App Engine and Compute Engine of Google SDK in order for us to create a user ready program with databases that connect directly to our server.
Challenges we ran into
One of the main challenges we ran into was the research and understanding behind the different types and methods of receiving financial aid. Between the four of us, we found that we had all used different types of loans to pay for our education. Not to mention the wide array of loan providers and their different rules and exceptions to their loans. If that wasn't hard enough all of us had at least 2 different types of loans to worry about. Being able to compile all of that information into one easy plan is a breath relief to a relentlessly stressful topic.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're proud to have not only built the website front to back from scratch but to have an accurate algorithm that can calculate multiple loans into a single simple plan. Getting the math just right was absolutely essential.
What we learned
Not only was this a great intro into web building for some of our first time HTML coders. But by building a website front to back with an attached database and server gave even our long-time coders some rather difficult challenges.
What's next for Paid-it
Not only would we want to make this algorithm usable to all college students who need it. We'd also like to expand the format of compiling all of your financial payments into one easy plan. We very much believe that this method could not only be applied to car and house loans but could also be used to understand insurance percentages and credit card interest. The format that Paid-it provides has the potential to be spread to multiple different financial fields.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.