Why I Built Budget Sentry
A look at the financial difficulties BTech students face and how I designed a local dashboard to solve them.
The Student Budget Problem
As a BTech student, I frequently faced the challenge of tracking my weekly and monthly expenses. Between canteen trips, textbooks, hosteling costs, and personal items, pocket money would vanish without any trace.
Most budget apps are built for professionals, packed with credit card integrations, investment widgets, and aggressive ads. They feel heavy and irrelevant for a student budget.
This inspired me to build Budget Sentry—a minimal, high-speed expense planner designed with students in mind.
Core Architecture Decisions
When sketching the prototype, I wanted to build two versions to test different architectures: 1. Beginner LocalStorage version: To see how simple state, standard arrays, and client-side storage behave. It's fast, doesn't require databases, and runs completely in-browser. 2. Upgraded Next.js + SQLite version: To integrate a relational database layer using Prisma, build proper backend API validation routes using Zod, and render responsive, lightweight charts with Recharts.
Both versions are integrated into this portfolio website so that recruiters and professors can play with either implementation and contrast the software engineering choices.