RiskRise

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Python code for the investing game (1/2)
Python code for the investing game (2/2)

Inspiration

Getting started with investing and personal finance can be intimidating. We know from personal experience. The complex financial jargon, the fear of messing up, and the sheer volume of things to do can all deter someone from investing and/or learning about personal finance. The solve this problem, we sought to create a low-risk investing game which also teaches the player the basics of personal finance.

Furthermore, RiskRise teaches the user about general personal finance concepts while also addressing issues specific to women. Many online platforms aiming to teach people about personal finance neglect the unique issues that women face such as family planning, retirement planning for a longer life (since women live longer on average), and being more frequently denied loans and credit cards by banks.

What it does

The user starts by creating a character. They can customize the character as they choose—name, appearance, etc. The character starts roughly at age 18.
The user gets a monthly deposit from their ‘salary’ which is determined by their character’s financial standing.
The user uses that monthly salary to invest. The user can increase their bank balance by selling assets.
The user can embellish their life in accordance with their bank balance. For example, a higher bank balance means a nicer house!
In order to unlock the ability to make certain decisions, the user but complete personal finance quizzes. For example, in order to buy a house, the user has to take a quiz about mortgage!
The goal is to end your life with the most money. The amount of money you end your life with determines how much money you start your next life with.

How we built it

The front-end of our web app was built with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and the back-end was built with Python and Flask.

Challenges we ran into

A big challenge we ran into was learning JavaScript, since none of us were familiar with the language. We also struggled with integrated the python script we wrote for the investing game into the website.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Without a doubt, creating RiskRise taught us a lot. We are most proud of figuring out how to use live stock-market data, learning JavaScript (which none of us knew beforehand), and integrated python programming into our website using Flask!

What we learned

We learned JavaScript, how to use APIs, and how to integrate a python script into an HTML website.

What's next for RiskRise

In the future, we hope to make our web-app more aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly, add more functionalities to the investing game, and ensure that the personal finance portion of the game is linked to the investing portion of the game.