Full-stack / Financial literacy · November 2023
PiggyBank
Learning money, one small step at a time.
Hackathon team member & Developer
THE WORK
From idea
to practice.
We built PiggyBank in 24 hours at BostonHacks 2023 to help children connect everyday chores with earning, saving and financial goals. Our team won Best Financial Hack, sponsored by Capital One.
Two sides of the same goal
Parents could set allowances and paid chores. Children could check their balance, set a savings goal, see a projected savings timeline and mark chores complete. A GPT-powered PiggyBank Teller helped them explore item prices through conversation.
How the prototype worked
Separate React interfaces served parents and children, with Flask backends on Google Cloud virtual machines. A shared MySQL database on Cloud SQL held the data, while Pub/Sub supported notifications when chores were completed.
Building as a team
Brian Wong, Rigpea Wangchuk and I brought the interfaces, server logic and cloud services together over one hackathon weekend. The project was our first hackathon and a concentrated exercise in integrating a working system under a time limit.
What came next in the plan
Authentication, support for multiple families, mobile improvements and bank or payment integrations were proposed next steps. The repository captures the hackathon prototype and its original scope.