Menstrual Product Lifetime Cost Calculator

Inspiration

I created this project mostly out of a personal need to manage finances. For me, menstruation has always felt like a subscription that is difficult to opt out of. Just under half of the states in the US include menstrual products as a taxable good, and current inflationary concerns all add up to an insurmountable lifetime cost that can and should be controlled.

What it does

This project takes in personal information from a user and outputs a calculated lifetime cost of menstrual products.

How I built it

I first wanted to make a webpage with HTML and PHP to support the form inputs, but I was missing a web server and some PHP know-how. Thus, I made the GUI with Python's tkinter library.

Challenges I ran into

There were both interpersonal and technical difficulties. The team of four I started with dissolved by lunchtime on the first day due to creative differences and other obligations. I later tried to deploy my program as a webpage, but that didn't work either.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm proud that I was able to create a workable program in a single timeframe, as simple as it was, on my own.

What I learned

A program doesn't have to follow its original planned parameters to the last second. I changed from HTML/PHP to tkinter on the morning it was due. That said, you will be in a rush to finish.

What's next for Menstrual Product Lifetime Cost Calculator

The formula I used to add the cost of inflation was quite simplistic, so I plan to incorporate previous costs of menstrual products to model inflation. This will most likely be hard to do, since I couldn't find much information on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, and that I will need to learn more data science related softwares. I want to also add more visual elements to my program, such as showing how the total cost was calculated and a graph from the start to end date. And lastly, make the GUI prettier.

Built With

• python
• tkinter