Finance App

This project was created during the 2025 hackathon. I was on a team with two other friends, and we brainstormed ideas until we landed on this project. We called it Budget Buddy and decided that its features should include budgeting capabilities and a meal suggestion planner. My role in this project was to be the team lead, since I was familiar with the technology and the others were new to it.

How it works

The strong point of this project is its ability to recommend meals based on the user’s budget. This was done through the Spoonacular API, which suggested meals and their ingredients. We were then able to use this information to calculate the cost of meals and recommend them based on the user’s budget.

The frontend was connected to the backend via Flask routes, which triggered backend operations based on the user’s actions. User records were also stored in a MySQL database, along with the information that was collected.

Tech stack

The tech stack consisted of React, Flask + Python, and MySQL. As mentioned before, I was familiar with these technologies, with the exception of MySQL. This was before my database class, so I had no experience with SQL at all. I took over the frontend and the Flask routes and ensured that any code pushed looked good.

Future improvements

This project was under a huge time constraint since the hackathon lasted 72 hours. Many features had to be scrapped, and we encountered many errors while building it. Some improvements would be to refine the frontend and make the UI much more fluid. The backend would need a higher level of security and a restructuring of how we store the data. I do like the idea of a finance budgeting app and plan to implement a new one with the knowledge I now have.