Budget Analysis and Money Management Tool

This is a web application that is intended to assist visitors with their financial health by offering budgeting advice and providing a visualization of their financial situation.

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Inspiration

Despite the numerous amount of opportunities in America relative to other countries there are so many Americans in debt. I've always wondered why and I wanted to build a free tool that could offer some kind of individualized, tailored advice to best fit their financial needs and help them get out of their financial jam.

What it does

This web application was designed to provide customized financial advice based on the information the user provides and generate a downloadable table in PDF format of all of their monthly expenses relative to the income that he/she nets every month. Using Chart.js the web application will dynamically generate a graph as well for the user so that he/she is able to visually see the seriousness of certain debts relative to others and allow them to proceed accordingly.

For example if the difference between your net income and monthly expenses is huge, you would get a strong message from the web application with some specific links for further information. If the difference is moderate you will get a lighter response from the application but still strong. If the difference is small you will still get advice but it is not treated with the same severity as with a higher difference.

How I built it

I built the front-end with HTML5, CSS3, Materialize CSS and used PHP and MySQL for my back-end. I managed to integrate the front-end with the back-end but my PHP script was not working properly with MySQL which I will explain later.

Challenges I ran into

  1. Although my PHP script successfully created a connection with the MySQL server it would not execute the SQL query and insert the values into the MySQL database. This simple problem took up 80% of my time. This was and still is a big problem because the storage of the user's financial data is the crux of the web application. I also need to retrieve this information so I could dynamically create the chart with Chart.js.
  2. I wanted to export the financial data as a JSON file and XML file from the database as well. This wasn't possible because of #1.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

  1. I'm familiar with Materialize CSS.
  2. I'm better with PHP.
  3. I know how to create a connection to a MySQL database with PHP.

What I learned

Materialize CSS and using PHP and MySQL together. I also learned how to set up an HTTP server locally.

What's next for Budget Analysis and Money Management Tool

It does not stop here. I will figure out how to get the data stored in the database and from there it should be relatively straightforward because I can retrieve the fields that I want with PHP and manipulate the data with JavaScript to create the chart.

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