Money Mentor
A full-stack finance platform for expense tracking, investments, and AI-powered insights.
https://moneymentor.bamacharan.com/
Problem
Personal finance tools often show transactions without helping users understand patterns or make better decisions. Money Mentor was built to connect expense tracking, budget visibility, investment context, and AI guidance in one dashboard.
What I Built
Money Mentor is a full-stack financial management application for tracking expenses, analyzing spending behavior, viewing investment insights, and sharing family expenses. It includes real-time budget tracking, categorized reports, a dynamic financial-health score, and AI-powered advice through Google Gemini.
Technical Decisions
The frontend uses React with Vite and Tailwind CSS. The backend uses Node.js, Express.js, MongoDB with Mongoose, JWT authentication, Socket.io for real-time behavior, Plaid API for banking integration, and Google Generative AI for financial guidance.
I structured the application as separate client and server apps so the dashboard UI, API layer, authentication, and data workflows could evolve independently.
Outcome
The project shipped as a production deployment and became one of my strongest full-stack builds because it combines authentication, data modeling, real-time updates, third-party APIs, and AI features in one product.