Projects
Expense Tracker
Expense Tracker enables users to log spending, categorize transactions, and visualize monthly summaries. It was built to highlight budgeting trends with clear charts and simplified data entry. The primary focus was on clean data modeling, reliable CRUD flows, and readable chart outputs.
The problem this solves
Most people have no idea where their money actually goes month to month. Spreadsheets are too manual, and most finance apps are either overkill or require bank access. This project focuses on frictionless manual logging with clear visual feedback — so users can build awareness without connecting sensitive accounts.
What it does
- Transaction logging with category tagging
- Monthly spending breakdown with Chart.js visualizations
- Budget targets per category with over-budget alerts
- Recurring expense support
- REST API backend with MongoDB for persistent storage
- Filtering and search across transaction history
Hard parts and how I solved them
Data modeling for financial tracking is deceptively tricky. Recurring transactions need to generate entries without duplicating data. Categories need to be flexible enough for different user habits but structured enough for aggregation queries. Getting the Chart.js visualizations to update reactively as new transactions were added without full page refreshes required careful state management on the frontend.
Tech stack
Outcome
A clean, functional expense tracker that gives users a genuinely useful picture of their spending. The chart-to-transaction relationship feels intuitive — clicking a chart segment filters the transaction list to that category, which makes investigation natural.
My role
Full-stack — data modeling, Express REST API, MongoDB queries and aggregations, Chart.js integration, and React frontend.