Finance-Tracker

đź’° A simple ASP.NET Core app to track income, expenses, and manage personal finances.
C#

Building My Own Finance Tracker with ASP.NET MVC

For the longest time, I wasn’t really in control of my spending. I had a vague idea of where my money was going, but nothing concrete. I’d occasionally try a budgeting app, only to stop using it a week later. Most of them were either too complicated or just didn’t click with the way I think.

So I decided to build my own.

I called it Finance Tracker, and it’s a simple ASP.NET MVC web app that helps me track my income, expenses, and get a clearer picture of my financial habits.

Why build something like this?

Honestly, it started as a side project just to sharpen my .NET skills. But pretty quickly, I realized I could actually use it in my day-to-day life. I didn’t want a full-blown accounting system or a flashy app with graphs everywhere. I just wanted something clean, minimal, and functional.

I also liked the idea of owning my data. No ads, no cloud syncing, no subscriptions. Just a private tool that lives on my own machine (or a server I control) and helps me stay on top of things.

What it does

The app lets you:

  • Create categories for transactions (like “Groceries”, “Salary”, “Subscriptions”)
  • Add income and expense entries with notes and timestamps
  • View a simple dashboard that breaks down your finances
  • Manage everything through a straightforward web interface

There’s basic authentication using ASP.NET Identity, so it supports multiple users if needed. But right now, I’m the only one using it.

How it’s built

It’s a standard ASP.NET MVC project. Views are Razor-based, and I’m using Entity Framework Core with SQL Server for the backend. Nothing too fancy — just a clean architecture and enough structure to make future features easy to add.

One thing I appreciated about sticking with MVC was the control over routing, view structure, and form handling. It felt a lot more straightforward than working within the constraints of a more “opinionated” front-end-heavy stack.

What I learned

Even though it’s not a huge project, working on this taught me a lot. Mainly, how small improvements to tooling can have a real impact on daily habits. I also got more comfortable working with Identity and EF Core migrations, and was reminded that building software for yourself is one of the most rewarding kinds of development.

What’s next

Right now, I’m thinking about:

  • Adding recurring transactions
  • Generating monthly reports
  • Exporting data to CSV
  • Making the UI more responsive for mobile

Eventually, I might host it somewhere properly and secure it with HTTPS and 2FA. But for now, it’s just running locally — and that’s enough.

Final thoughts

This isn’t meant to compete with apps like YNAB or Mint. It’s just a personal tool that solves a problem for me, in a way that’s simple and satisfying. If you’re curious about the code or want to adapt it for your own needs, feel free to check out the repo:

https://github.com/badass-commits/finance-tracker

And if you’ve built something similar — or are thinking about it — I’d love to hear how you approached it.