Penny Pals: Financial Education for Kids

🎓 The Problem

Financial literacy is often overlooked in traditional education, leaving young individuals unprepared to manage money effectively as they grow older. Many children are unaware of the fundamental principles of saving, budgeting, and investing. Penny Pals addresses this issue by introducing these concepts early on in a format that is approachable, engaging, and easy to understand for young minds.

🌟 What is Penny Pals?

Penny Pals is an approachable investment simulation game designed to promote financial literacy, especially for people of color and women. We aim to reduce wealth disparity by practicing healthy financial practices, teaching risk, and building healthy relationships with money, and encouraging business and entrepreneurial skills.

What makes our app unique is that it’s a game played collaboratively by the parent and child, teaching both how to manage and communicate about finances. Parents simulate deposits into their child’s account, and the child invests that money based on real-time market data.

🚀 Demo

✨ You can check out our live demo at Penny Pals

🎥 Watch our demo video! View Demo

🔮 Future Innovations

At Penny Pals, we are continually looking for ways to enhance the user experience for both children and parents. Here’s a look at what’s next for the platform:

• iMessage Integration: To make it easier for parents to engage with their children about financial lessons, we plan to integrate Penny Pals with iMessage. This will allow parents to send financial tips, reminders, and challenges directly to their kids through a platform they already use daily.

• Parental Controls for Setting Savings/Investment Goals: Parents will soon have the ability to set custom savings and investment goals for their children. They can create tailored objectives, such as saving for a specific item or setting aside money for a future college fund. This feature aims to foster active participation from parents in teaching financial literacy.

• Expanded Investment Assets: We plan to introduce more assets that children can "invest" in, giving them a broader perspective on saving and investing. By simulating a wider variety of financial instruments, kids will gain a more comprehensive understanding of real-world financial markets and choices.

🧗‍♀️ Challenges and Hurdles

• Implementing a Local AI Model: Integrating a local AI model was challenging due to balancing performance, response times, and infrastructure setup.
• EJS for Frontend: Ensuring dynamic data rendered correctly with EJS required careful management of templates and state changes.
• Real-Time Stock Data APIs: Accessing real-time stock data involved overcoming API limitations and ensuring consistent, accurate data integration.

Join us in revolutionizing financial education for the next generation!