Capstone Project: Personal Finance Tracker

Overview

The Personal Finance Tracker project is designed to help users take control of their money by tracking their incomes and expenses. It simulates a real-world use case, where data is collected, stored, analyzed, and visualized — all using Python. This project brings together everything you’ve learned so far: user input, file handling, conditionals, data structures, and simple data visualization. It also serves as a stepping stone to working with external files and basic data analytics.

Core Features

Input Transactions: Users can add income or expense entries along with categories such as “Food”, “Rent”, or “Salary”.
Persistent Storage: Save each transaction to a CSV file or database so that data isn’t lost when the program closes.
Summary Calculations: Compute overall balance, total income, total expense, and show a breakdown by category.
Visual Reporting: Use charts like pie charts or bar graphs to represent expenses visually.
Optional Filters: Add filters to show summaries for a specific date range or category.

Tools and Concepts You’ll Use

File Handling: Read from and write to CSV files using Python’s built-in csv module.
Date and Time: Utilize datetime to timestamp transactions automatically.
Dictionaries & Lists: Use these core data structures to organize and manipulate financial data.
Pandas (Optional): Efficiently analyze large amounts of financial data.
Matplotlib: Turn your raw data into meaningful visual insights with simple graphs.
SQLite (Optional): For those looking to expand further, use a lightweight database to manage transactions more securely.

Step-by-Step Project Breakdown

1. 📥 Collect User Input

amount = float(input("Enter amount: "))
category = input("Enter category (e.g. Food, Rent, Salary): ")
type_ = input("Is this an income or expense? ").lower()

Prompt the user to enter transaction details. Ensure the type is either income or expense.

2. 💾 Save to File

from datetime import datetime
import csv

entry = [datetime.now().strftime("%Y-%m-%d"), type_, category, amount]

with open("finance_data.csv", mode="a", newline="") as file:
    writer = csv.writer(file)
    writer.writerow(entry)

Every transaction is saved with the current date, type, category, and amount.

3. 📊 Analyze and Summarize Transactions

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_csv("finance_data.csv", names=["Date", "Type", "Category", "Amount"])
income = df[df["Type"] == "income"]["Amount"].sum()
expense = df[df["Type"] == "expense"]["Amount"].sum()
balance = income - expense

print(f"Total Income: ₹{income}")
print(f"Total Expenses: ₹{expense}")
print(f"Current Balance: ₹{balance}")

Read from the CSV, calculate totals, and present an easy-to-read summary in the terminal.

4. 📈 Visualize Expense Breakdown

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

expense_data = df[df["Type"] == "expense"].groupby("Category")["Amount"].sum()
expense_data.plot(kind='pie', autopct='%1.1f%%', startangle=90)
plt.title("Expenses by Category")
plt.ylabel("")
plt.show()

Visual feedback helps users quickly understand where most of their money goes.

Sample Output

CSV Sample:

  2025-03-30,expense,Food,500
  2025-03-30,income,Salary,15000

Terminal Output:

  Total Income: ₹15000.0
  Total Expenses: ₹500.0
  Current Balance: ₹14500.0

Pie Chart Example:
A colorful chart showing how much was spent in each category like Food, Rent, Shopping, etc.

Bonus Enhancements (Optional Ideas)

GUI Interface: Build a simple user interface using tkinter to make the tracker more user-friendly.
Database Storage: Replace CSV with SQLite using the sqlite3 module for more structured data storage.
Monthly Filters: Allow users to choose a specific month/year and generate custom reports.
Export Report: Automatically generate PDF or Excel reports using pandas or xlsxwriter.

What You’ll Learn

How to take user input and store data persistently
How to work with CSV files and analyze data with Pandas
How to generate basic visual reports using matplotlib
How to write modular, real-world Python programs

Next Project: [Simple Chatbot – Let’s Build an Interactive Assistant!]

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