Inspiration

BuckIT was inspired by all members of the group believing we needed an app to better pay off debts of the past, plan budgeting for the present, and save for goals for the future. All of our banking, credit, and financial applications currently are either too complicated or too boring, and we needed an innovative idea for a new website that we would be excited to use ourselves. In short, we needed to keep afloat and save a Buck, hence BuckIT.

What it does

BuckIT is a financial planner and savings tracking application formatted on a website. This is used by users to create new buckets based either in the past, present, or future, and pertaining to debts, budgeting, and saving for future expenses, respectively. Users connect their bank accounts with BuckIT and get personalized financial advice as well as the ability to create ‘BuckITs’ which fill up as they pay off debts or work towards saving goals. When a future goal is achieved, BuckIT matches the goal by 5% to incentivize users to save for the future.

BuckIT was created using HTML code mainly for the purpose of making a website which could host the user-created BuckITs as well as give users financial information. Canva was used to plan the website interface, create the accompanying presentation, and design a still and animated logo for the site. Github and website template application Jekyll was used to find a website code template and create our own code website for BuckIT based on the template. Microsoft Word was used for further planning and creating the text portions of the website final product. Finally, Copilot and Gemini AI were used for assistance in code debugging.

There were some compatibility issues during the website creation process, so we had to change layouts in the middle of coding the original website. Our new layout was finally able to run, but there were further issues with image processing and pathing while trying to finalize the BuckIT website. These problems are still being combatted as of prior to the 11pm initial deadline, but we expect to patch these problems before Sunday’s final submission.

Two of the team members, or half of our team, are non-TECH majors, one in Electrical Engineering and the other a Physics major, but both were able to face challenges to provide help to the team as much as able. We coded for the first time in HTML and were able to assist the other members with coding the website during the Hackathon. Additionally, we were able to create a logo, accompanying slides, and a skeleton website before the 11pm website despite believing we had a combined beginner experience at the beginning of the day.

We learned that any amount of experience is enough to get something of worth done when one has enough motivation, support, and a proper attitude. We are better at HTML coding than we were before, and have worked on our graphic design and presentation skills.

An official BuckIT app is in our future plans to allow for more personalized user experience and closer consumer bonds. We will expand our team to include web designers and hard coders in addition to our current team.