📘 BudgetEase – Personal Budget and Expense Planner

BudgetEase helps users track their expenses, plan budgets, and understand their financial habits with clear visual insights.
It offers an intuitive interface, secure authentication, and useful analytics to simplify personal finance management.

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🚨 Problem Statement

Manually tracking expenses often becomes confusing and time-consuming. People struggle to understand where their money goes, how to maintain budgets, and how to monitor their financial health.

BudgetEase solves this by allowing users to:

• Record and categorize expenses
• Visualize spending patterns
• Create and manage budgets
• Get monthly insights and financial breakdowns

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🏗️ System Architecture

Architecture Flow:
Frontend (Next.js + React) → Backend API (Node.js + Express) → Database (MySQL)

🔧 Tech Stack

Frontend

• Next.js
• React
• TailwindCSS

Backend

• Node.js
• Express.js

Database

• MySQL

Authentication

• JWT-based login/signup

Hosting

• Frontend → Vercel
• Backend → Render / Railway
• Database → Aiven

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✨ Key Features

🔐 Authentication & Authorization

• User registration
• Login & logout
• JWT-based session management

📦 CRUD Operations

• Add, view, edit, delete expenses
• Create and manage budgets

🧭 Frontend Routing

• Home
• Login
• Signup
• Dashboard
• Add Expense
• Budget Overview

🗂️ Expense Categorization

• Categories like Food, Transport, Utilities, etc.

⚙️ Data Operations

• Search
• Filter
• Sorting (by date, category, amount)
• Pagination

📊 Analytics & Visualization

• Monthly spending summaries
• Charts showing category-wise breakdown
• Budget vs. actual spending insights

☁️ Hosting

• Fully deployed backend & frontend
• Accessible production URLs

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📑 Tech Stack Overview

Layer	Technologies
Frontend	Next.js, React, TailwindCSS, Axios
Backend	Node.js, Express.js
Database	MySQL
Authentication	JWT-based login/signup
Hosting	Vercel (Frontend), Render/Railway (Backend), MySQL on Aiven

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🧪 API Overview

Endpoint	Method	Description	Access
/api/auth/signup	POST	Register a new user	Public
/api/auth/login	POST	Authenticate user and issue JWT	Public
/api/expenses	GET	Get all expenses for user	Authenticated
/api/expenses	POST	Add a new expense	Authenticated
/api/expenses/:id	PUT	Update expense by ID	Authenticated
/api/expenses/:id	DELETE	Delete expense by ID	Authenticated
/api/budgets	GET	Get user budget overview	Authenticated
/api/budgets	POST	Create/update budget	Authenticated

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