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Better Haves Wins $50K FinCapDev Grand Prize

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An app called Better Haves won the Grand Prize at the FinCapDev $100K Demo Day held at Capital One 360 Cafe in San Francisco Tuesday evening. 

The event pitted 10 finalists against one another in a mobile app-making contest geared toward “helping working Americans make smart financial choices and gain better access to financial services.” 

Having made it past a qualifying round last fall, finalists gathered before a panel of judges to demo their mobile apps in two-minute elevator pitches. Finalists also fielded questions about their apps from the judges before the final voting. 
The Grand Prize-winning app, Better Haves, is a budgeting solution for couples to help them form better financial habits by sharing their spending tendencies and values. The Better Haves team consisted of Itai Leibowitz, Marcos Siqueira, and Vanya Pasheva – shown accepting their Grand Prize below.
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Two finalists picked up a pair of runners-up prizes. An app called Thrifty Bunch (the “Wikipedia for needs-based shopping”) uses a variation of crowdsourcing to help limit impulse buying. Down Payment Saver also earned a runners-up award. This budgeting app is geared toward helping renters overcome the single biggest hurdle to homeownership: coming up with a downpayment.

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A budget and savings app called Financial Forest, and an insurance advisory app named Smart Insurance earned Honorable Mentions.
Financial Forest focuses on helping those living paycheck to paycheck save enough money for a one-month emergency fund. Smart Insurance is an app that helps consumers make sound decisions on everything from whether or not to buy an extended warranty when purchasing an appliance to picking the best auto insurance deal.
All the finalists’ apps are available for download. Read more about each of the apps in the contest here.
The FinCapDev competition is presented and administered by the D2D Fund and the Center for Financial Innovation. The event is a companion competition to the MyMoneyAppUp Challenge sponsored by the U.S. Department of Treasury.
Grand prize for the FinCapDev competition was $50,000. Runners up received prizes of $20,000 each. Both Honorable Mention winners earned $5,000 each. 
Learn more about all of the finalists here.