SmartCents is a financial education web app built for Recess Hacks 5.0. It is designed to help adolescents learn about personal finance in an interactive and supportive way. The platform combines simple budgeting tools, savings goal tracking, and an AI-powered mentor to provide personalized advice.
We noticed that financial literacy is rarely taught at a young age, yet it is one of the most important life skills. Our goal was to create a tool that makes budgeting approachable, encourages saving habits, and gives students personalized tips to become financially independent.
- How to integrate AI into a web application for personalized mentorship.
- Building both a frontend and backend under time constraints.
- Managing application state between local storage and live updates.
- Simplifying design for younger audiences while keeping features powerful.
- Frontend: HTML, CSS, JavaScript
- Backend: Node.js with Express
- AI Integration: OpenAI API for personalized financial advice and chatbot functionality
- Data Management: Local storage (no database required for this version)
- Deployment: Hosted on Vercel for seamless frontend + backend delivery
- Using Live Share for team collaboration since some members were not familiar with Git workflows.
- Learning Next.js in under 10 hours to explore modern frameworks, while balancing hackathon deadlines.
- Integrating AI responses into the frontend in a way that felt natural and useful to the user.
- Dashboard with spending and saving insights.
- Add and track transactions.
- Set and monitor financial goals.
- Independence Score to gamify progress.
- AI Mentor and Chatbot that provide real-time financial advice.
## Getting Started
Follow these steps to set up and run SmartCents locally:
1. **Clone the repository**
```bash
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/SmartCents.git
cd SmartCents-
Install dependencies
npm install
-
Start the server
node index.js
-
Open the app Go to http://localhost:3000 in your browser to view the dashboard.