Individuals from Delaware, Florida, Mississippi, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Washington, DC, Claim Cash Prizes
Grand Prize Winner Proposes App to Make Student Loans
Easier to Manage
Washington – The U.S.
Department of the Treasury (Treasury), the D2D Fund (D2D), and Center for
Financial Services Innovation (CFSI) today announced the winners of the App
Design portion of the MyMoneyAppUp Challenge—a contest offering cash prizes
and recognition for the best mobile app ideas and designs to help Americans
make smart financial choices, access high quality financial products and
services, and ultimately control and shape their financial futures. The winners were announced at the conclusion
of an awards event at Treasury that brought together the eight finalists with
senior Treasury officials, a panel of expert judges, and Challenge partners and
sponsors.
As
a result of the live judging, individuals and teams from across the country were
awarded cash prizes for ideas to make it easier to manage student loans, save for
a car, connect low-income households with resources in their communities, track
and control impulse spending, and calculate the full cost of purchases made on
credit cards.
“As
we work to improve our nation’s financial capability, we must look to how technology
is changing personal finance,” said Treasury Deputy Secretary Neal Wolin at the
event. “App designs like the ones we saw
today have real potential to be game changers in our efforts toward greater
financial understanding and access.”
Of the eight finalists
who made presentations, expert judges selected one Grand Prize Winner, who was
awarded $10,000. Additionally, two
Runners-Up won $5,000 each and two Honorable Mentions won $2,500 each.
The winners announced today are:
Grand Prize—Centz: Nicole
Kendrot, Hoboken, New Jersey
z helps to make
student loans easy and simple to manage.
Among other features, the app allows users to: link information about all of their student
loans in one place; create a payoff plan that syncs with their budget; suggest
ways the user can reduce their payment period and total interest paid by making
extra payments; learn about managing student loans; and test their knowledge
about student loans and personal finance.
First Runner-Up—My Next Car: Richard Trask, Landenberg, Pennsylvania; Jason Mastriani, Newark,
Delaware
My Next Car helps people to
save in advance of their next car purchase, thereby avoiding car loan interest
payments. It is designed specifically
for first-time automobile purchasers and to encourage people who have paid-off
their current car to continue making “car payments” into a savings
account. The app includes such features
as: uploading a photo of the desired
car to set a goal; shopping guides and tools; a monthly “e-bill” reminder to
save for a new car; and a running total of “interest saved” by saving for the
purchase rather than borrowing.
Second Runner-Up—MOOLAH: Pamela
Chan and Eric Tyler, Washington, DC
MOOLAH is a design for
a financial decision-making tool that would assist low-income households to
achieve their goals. The app would
enable users to assess their financial situation, create a budget with
connections to public benefits, and recommend related social services and
financial products. It would be a
combination of personal financial management software and a single-stop public
benefits and community services referral portal.
First Honorable Mention—Crazy Money: Nancy Anderson, Clinton, Mississippi
Crazy Money uses a game
interface to help users track and control impulse spending – that is, their
“crazy” money. Users of the app create a
game to track their impulse spending by setting a monthly limit for their crazy
money expenditures and parameters for their use of the funds, such as borrowing
from future months and sharing information about their practices. Alarms sound when the user exceeds his crazy
money budget, and other people in the user’s network are notified about the
spending, too.
Second Honorable
Mention—Know It All:
Robert Scott, Parrish, Florida
Know It All enables
consumers to instantly calculate the full cost of a credit card purchase, so
users can make fully informed decisions about their purchases. It calculates the accrued interest the
purchaser will be charged given their current interest rate, current credit
card balance, and minimum monthly payments.
The app includes a scanner for reviewing a price via a UPC or QR
code. Once the information is scanned,
the app will display a full financial impact statement with details on the
long-term cost of their purchase, given different credit cards.
To view the App Design finalists’
submissions, visit MyMoneyAppUp.Challenge.gov/updates/517.
To view the archived webcast of today’s
event, visit http://treas.yorkcast.com/webcast/Viewer/?peid=da6cc272ef5044f3ae550f07538027c61d
Support for prizes and the administration of the Challenge by D2D and CFSI
comes from the Ford Foundation, Omidyar Network, and the Citi Foundation.
No government funds were used as part of the MyMoneyAppUp Challenge.
With the conclusion of the MyMoneyAppUp Challenge, competitors who want to take
their winning ideas to the next step and develop fully functional apps may
enter the Financial Capability Development (FinCapDev) Competition, a separate, complementary competition
sponsored exclusively by D2D and CFSI.
About the MyMoneyAppUp Challenge: The MyMoneyAppUp Challenge,
launched by Treasury in partnership with the D2D Fund and Center for Financial
Services Innovation, is a contest offering cash prizes for the best mobile app
ideas and designs to help Americans make smart financial choices, access high
quality financial products and services, and control and shape their financial
futures.
The Challenge is part of Treasury's efforts to promote Smart Disclosure, a new
initiative by the Obama Administration to expand access to data that can fuel
the creation of new products and services to benefit financial consumers.
Contestants were encouraged to create ideas and designs for apps that
incorporate data to promote financial capability and access.
To learn more about the
Challenge, visit MyMoneyAppUp.Challenge.gov.
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