Every day, people make financial decisions that shape their future.

Should I invest or pay off debt?

Should I save more or take advantage of a market opportunity?

Can I actually afford this purchase?

The strange part is that most of us make these decisions using fragmented information.

We use one app for budgeting, another for investments, separate banking applications, financial news websites, and social media for advice. Despite having more financial information than ever before, many people still feel uncertain about what the "right" decision is.

That observation became the starting point for our HACKHAZARDS '26 project: SmartWallet AI.

The Problem

The problem isn't a lack of financial tools.

The problem is that these tools don't understand the full picture.

Most financial platforms focus on a single aspect of money management. Budgeting apps track expenses. Investment apps focus on returns. Banking apps show balances. None of them connect the dots.

As a result, people often:

• Invest while carrying expensive debt
• Panic during market downturns
• Overspend despite having long-term financial goals
• Miss opportunities because they lack context
• Make emotional decisions that hurt their financial future

The challenge today is no longer accessing information.

The challenge is knowing what information actually matters.

Our Solution: SmartWallet AI

SmartWallet AI is an intelligent financial copilot that helps users make smarter decisions across spending, saving, debt management, and investing.

Instead of treating these activities separately, SmartWallet analyzes them together as part of a connected financial ecosystem.

The platform evaluates:

• Income sources
• Expenses
• Savings
• Debt obligations
• Investment portfolios
• Market conditions
• Financial news sentiment

and generates personalized recommendations based on the user's overall financial health.

A key principle behind SmartWallet is simple:

The best financial decision isn't always the one with the highest return.

For example, if a user has insufficient emergency savings or high-interest debt, SmartWallet may recommend improving their financial foundation before pursuing investment opportunities.

We believe financial guidance should be personalized, practical, and responsible.

Technology Stack

To bring this idea to life, we combined AI, graph intelligence, and financial data analysis.

Neo4j Graph Database

Financial decisions are highly interconnected.

A person's income affects savings. Savings affect investment capacity. Debt influences risk tolerance. Market conditions influence opportunities.

Traditional databases store these as isolated records. Neo4j allows us to model them as relationships.

This enables SmartWallet to understand how different financial factors influence one another and generate context-aware recommendations.

Sarvam AI

Sarvam AI powers our conversational financial assistant.

Users can interact naturally with the platform, ask financial questions, and receive personalized guidance based on their financial profile.

FinBERT

Financial markets move on information.

To help users stay informed without being overwhelmed, we use FinBERT to analyze financial news and market sentiment, transforming large volumes of information into meaningful insights.

FastAPI + React Native

FastAPI powers our backend services and recommendation engine, while React Native enables a seamless cross-platform mobile experience.

Challenges We Faced

One of the biggest challenges was designing a system that balances multiple financial priorities simultaneously.

Most recommendation engines optimize for a single objective.

We wanted SmartWallet to evaluate trade-offs.

Should a user invest?

Should they pay off debt?

Should they build an emergency fund?

Creating recommendation logic that considers all these factors while remaining practical and user-centric was one of the most interesting parts of the project.

Another challenge was building a graph structure capable of representing complex financial relationships without sacrificing performance or scalability.

Why This Matters

Financial intelligence has traditionally been available only to institutions with access to analysts, research teams, and sophisticated tools.

Meanwhile, everyday individuals are expected to make life-changing financial decisions on their own.

We believe that gap shouldn't exist.

SmartWallet AI is our attempt to make intelligent financial guidance accessible to everyone—not just professional investors.

Because better financial decisions shouldn't depend on how many apps you use.

They should depend on how well your financial story is understood.

And that's exactly what SmartWallet AI is designed to do.

Built for HACKHAZARDS '26