Home Budget

AI-powered personal finance dashboard

A simple personal-finance MVP that helps users track spending, monitor savings goals, and understand monthly trends through one clear dashboard.

Project type

SaaS dashboard

Role

Full-stack developer

Year

2025

Scope

Product design, UX direction, frontend implementation, backend setup, AI integration, Stripe sandbox setup, deploy

Home Budget landing page with finance-focused hero and floating stat cards

Budgets overview screen showing spending progress against planned limits per category

Transactions screen for reviewing and managing personal spending entries

Reports and insights screen with expense breakdown and income vs. expenses trend

Summary

Built for

Individuals and households who want a clearer view of income, expenses, savings, and month-to-month progress without using a heavy finance tool.

The problem

Most budgeting tools either feel too manual or too financial-planner-heavy for everyday use. People need one place where they can log their money flow, see trends quickly, and get a clear sense of whether they are improving or drifting.

Approach

Home Budget was designed as a simple MVP with a dashboard-first structure: lead with the most important numbers, reduce friction around understanding categories and trends, and use AI as lightweight guidance rather than gimmicky automation.

Showcase story

Home Budget is a simple personal-finance MVP turned into a polished live product in 1-2 weeks. It gives users one place to track income, expenses, and savings, then adds AI-assisted guidance to help them understand patterns instead of just logging numbers.

The problem

Budgeting apps often fail in one of two ways: they are either too bare-bones to create confidence, or so dense that everyday users avoid them after the first week. For a household user, the real job is not managing a ledger. It is quickly understanding where money is going and whether things are getting better month over month.

What I built

A finance dashboard centered on income, expenses, savings, and month-over-month movement
Auth entry points with dedicated sign-up and log-in screens
Transaction, budget, reports, saving goals, and settings views
AI-assisted insights intended to help users spot trends and savings opportunities
A product structure that supports both free and paid plan positioning
Stripe sandbox integration to validate subscription flow as part of the MVP

Design decisions

The visual identity avoids the usual banking-app-only blue look. Blue establishes trust, purple adds a more modern consumer-SaaS feel, and green stays tied to positive financial change. That matters because in a budgeting product, color should communicate meaning before it communicates brand personality. The interface is also intentionally lighter than the underlying data model. Large hero typography, restrained card count, and generous spacing make the experience feel simpler and more motivating.

Under the hood

This project shows a mix of UI craft and product systems thinking inside a very small build window. The stack supports a standard SaaS shape: auth, structured financial data, dashboard rendering, AI-assisted insight generation, and a Stripe sandbox payment path for plan validation.

Why it matters

This is the kind of project that signals:

You can ship a real SaaS product, not just a marketing site
You understand how to place AI inside a product flow with restraint
You can scope and ship a simple MVP quickly without stripping out the core product loop

Final positioning line

A simple personal-finance MVP built in 1-2 weeks, combining clear dashboard UX, AI-assisted guidance, and a sandboxed subscription flow.

Under the hood

The product combines a straightforward budgeting interface with an AI layer that helps users interpret their data, not just store it. Supabase covers authentication, structured data, and backend services, while Stripe was implemented in sandbox mode to validate the paid-plan flow without turning the MVP into a billing-heavy build.

Lovable

Initial product scaffolding and UI iteration

React

Interactive frontend application

Supabase

Database, auth, and backend services

OpenAI

AI-powered financial guidance and insight layer

Stripe

Sandbox subscription and payment flow validation