BudgetBuddy - Personal Finance Tracker Development

Aditya Mandhare

Fullstack Engineer

Node.js

PostgreSQL

React Native

Investment & Asset Management

📟 BudgetBuddy - Personal Finance Tracker

BudgetBuddy is a full-stack personal finance tracker built with:

React Native (Expo) for the mobile frontend

Clerk for authentication

Node.js + Express for the backend

PostgreSQL (via Neon) as the database

Upstash Redis for rate limiting

Optional cron job to prevent server cold starts on free hosting

📲 Features

🔐 Secure authentication using Clerk

➕ Add income/expense transactions

📊 View summary: balance, income, expenses

📃️ View and delete past transactions

🔄 Pull-to-refresh and offline-friendly UI

🌐 Rate limiting via Upstash Redis

☁️ Cloud-ready: supports serverless PostgreSQL and cron ping

✨ Tech Stack

Frontend (Expo) Backend (Express) Infra React Native (Expo) Express.js Neon PostgreSQL Clerk Auth PostgreSQL (via postgres.js) Upstash Redis Zustand REST APIs CRON (for cold start) Expo Router Rate Limiter

🛠️ Getting Started

⚙️ Backend Setup

1. Clone and Install

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/budgetbuddy-backend.git
cd budgetbuddy-backend
npm install

2. Environment Variables

Create a .env file in the root and add:

PORT=2000
DATABASE_URL=your_neon_postgres_url
API_URL=https://your-app-domain.com/api/health
UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_URL=your_upstash_url
UPSTASH_REDIS_REST_TOKEN=your_upstash_token
NODE_ENV=development

3. Run Locally

node index.js

Neon/Postgres table will auto-create if not present.

📱 Frontend Setup

Clone and setup the React Native frontend (already done):

cd budgetbuddy-frontend
npm install

Add this to your app.config.js or app.json:

"extra": {
  "expoPublicClerkPublishableKey": "your_clerk_publishable_key"
}

Run on Emulator / Device

npx expo start

📡️ API Endpoints

All endpoints prefixed with /api/transactions

Method Endpoint Description GET /api/health Health check POST /api/transactions/ Add a new transaction GET /api/transactions/:userId Get all transactions for user DELETE /api/transactions/:id Delete a transaction GET /api/transactions/summary/:userId Get balance, income, expenses