BudgetBuddy — Ridaa Bhatti

The Problem

Most personal finance apps are either bloated with features nobody uses or locked behind paywalls. For a first-time earner or student trying to actually track spending habits, the options were overwhelming or inaccessible.

BudgetBuddy was built to solve a simple problem: give someone a clean, fast way to log expenses, set budgets, and see where their money is actually going — without signing up, without subscriptions, without noise.

        "Can we build a finance tracker that someone would actually open every day — not because they have to, but because it's genuinely useful and pleasant to use?"
      

My Role

Solo 0→1 build. I wrote the product spec, made all architecture decisions, designed the UI in Figma, and built the full stack — Node.js REST API, MongoDB, and a React frontend with custom data visualizations.

This project sharpened my ability to make fast, defensible technical decisions without a team to consult — a core PM+eng skill.

Process

01

Spec & Scope

Defined the MVP feature set: expense logging, category tagging, monthly budget limits, and a summary dashboard. Explicitly scoped OUT: bank integrations, recurring transactions, multi-user support.

02

Architecture Decisions

Chose MongoDB for flexible expense schema, Node/Express for the API layer, and React for the UI. Opted for JWT auth over OAuth to keep the auth flow simple for a solo project.

03

UI Design (Figma)

Designed the dashboard, expense log, and budget views. Focused on data density — showing the most useful info without overwhelming. Used custom SVG charts rather than a library for full control.

04

Build & Deploy

Built API and frontend in parallel. Deployed backend to Railway, frontend to Vercel. Set up CI/CD with GitHub Actions for automatic deploys on main branch merges.

Outcomes

✓

Live and deployed

REST

Full API built from scratch

CI/CD

Automated deploy pipeline

Solo

End-to-end ownership

What I learned

The most valuable lesson: scoping is a product skill, not a technical one. The features I cut were just as important as the features I built. Keeping BudgetBuddy focused meant I actually shipped it, instead of abandoning it halfway through feature creep.

I also learned that building your own data visualizations — while slower — gives you far more flexibility and forces you to understand your data model more deeply than plugging in a chart library.