Case study · 02 Personal fintech · Family budgeting

A wallet for two,
balanced in real time.

A premium, commercial-grade family expense tracker & financial insights tool — built end-to-end as a personal & partner project.

Joint accounts, dynamic categories, budget planning, a bill calendar, monthly archives & an AI advisor — all under one private cloud-synced login.

Role Solo builder · full-stack
Year 2025 — 2026
Surfaces Web · cloud-synced
Status v2.1 · in daily use
familywallet.app/dashboard
Family Wallet dashboard
01 / The brief

Two incomes, one household.

Most budget apps are built for one person. Real households share rent, share groceries, split insurance — and need a single source of truth that both partners trust.

Family Wallet started as a spreadsheet between two people — rent, bills, the loan, the shopping — and grew into a full personal-finance platform I now run for our household.

I designed it as a premium, commercial-grade product from day one — secure individual + family account sync, dynamic categories with icons, professional-grade charts, an interactive bill calendar, and an AI layer for smart expense processing.

The goal: replace four tools we kept reaching for — a spreadsheet, a banking app, a calendar & a notes file — with one focused view of the month.

Built solo, end-to-end. React frontend, Node & PostgreSQL backend, JWT auth, deployed cloud-synced. Now on version 2.1 and still our daily driver.

Tech stack
React Vite Node.js Express PostgreSQL JWT Auth Recharts AI · Claude REST API Cloud sync
02 / The product

Built like a commercial app — for two users.

Family Wallet treats household money the way Linear treats a sprint: opinionated, fast, and obsessively visual. Dark-mode UI, emerald accents, every screen designed before it was built.

Public · auth

Private by default.

Per-user accounts with secure family sync — invite your partner with a six-character code, share categories & goals but keep individual income visible.

2Partner sync
JWTAuth
638Days together
Console · 8 modules

Every dollar, every month.

Dashboard, Categories, Record Daily, History, Planning, Savings, Reports, Calendar, Month History & Profile — all under one nav bar.

10Modules
14Categories
v2.1Shipped
03 / Inside the app

From login to live financial state.

A walkthrough of the eight surfaces you'd actually use in a month — the auth gate, the live dashboard, the bill calendar, the savings planner & everything in between.

AI expense advisor

A reasoning layer that classifies transactions, spots anomalies & suggests budget tweaks at the end of every month — built on top of Claude.

  • Smart category guessing — receipts become rows
  • End-of-month summary with surplus & risk flags
  • Bring-forward logic for leftover savings

Interactive bill calendar

Every recurring bill — rent, insurance, optus, NIB, loans — laid out on a month grid with paid/unpaid state and an upcoming-bills sidebar.

  • Recurring engine — monthly, fortnightly, custom
  • Today badge + next-major-bill card on dashboard
  • Tap to mark paid · auto-syncs to ledger
04 / Feature set

Ten modules. One nav bar.

Each module earned its own tab through actual use — the things we kept opening, not the things that sound clever in a feature list.

01
Live dashboard

Balance, required funds, projected surplus & per-partner income at a glance.

02
Dynamic categories

Custom categories with unique emoji icons & per-category budget caps.

03
Record daily

A frictionless one-tap entry screen optimised for thumb-speed input.

04
History & insights

List + analytics views — monthly income, total spend, savings rate.

05
Planning & goals

Set a shared financial goal & allocate the monthly surplus toward it.

06
Savings planner

Bring-forward, net savable & lifetime savings — finalise once per month.

07
Reports

Pro-grade charts & monthly trends powered by Recharts.

08
Bill calendar

Visual month grid & upcoming bill sidebar — never miss rent again.

09
Month archive

Lock each month, archive the totals, run reset for the next cycle.

05 / On the go

Now in your pocket, too.

The same Family Wallet, ported to iOS and Android. Cloud-synced with the web — record a coffee on the train, log rent at the gate, see the same number from both sides of the bed.

9:41
Family WalletWelcome back, pasan
P
Live balance
$1,420
Healthy cash flow
Required funds
$5,857
Reserved for upcoming bills
Pasan's income
$4,200
Home
Bills
Save
Me
9:41
Bill TrackerMay 2026 · 6 bills
🔔
Today · due now
🏠 Rent
$640
🚗
Car Insurance
May 7th · monthly
$122
📱
Optus
May 16th · monthly
$215
⚕️
NIB Health
May 19th · monthly
$170
Home
Bills
Save
Me
9:41
Savings 🐷Day 28 · finalise month
💰
Lifetime savings
$3,711
Total from finalised months
🎯 Emergency Fund62%
$6,200$10,000
✈️ Holiday 202728%
$1,400$5,000
🏡 House deposit8%
$4,000$50,000
Home
Bills
Save
Me
9:41
Bill CalendarMay 2026 · 6 due
📅
May 2026
S
M
T
W
T
F
S
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
📱
Optus
Due 27th
$60
Home
Bills
Save
Me
01

Pair up & sync

Create an account, generate a six-character invite, and your partner joins your household. Categories, goals & bills sync both ways instantly.

02

Record the everyday

One-tap entry for daily spend. The AI advisor reads the merchant string and pre-fills the right category — coffee, groceries, fuel — in under a second.

03

Bills, scheduled

Set rent, insurance, phone & loans as recurring with monthly or fortnightly cadence. Each one lands on the calendar, surfaces on the dashboard the day it's due, and clears with one tap.

04

Plan the surplus

Live balance — required funds — bring-forward = net savable. Drag-prioritise savings goals & the planner allocates the surplus in priority order, every payday.

05

Finalise the month

On the 28th, the app prompts a one-tap close — locks the month, archives the totals into Month History, rolls leftover savings to next month's bring-forward, and resets the next cycle clean.

06

Stay in sync, everywhere

Web on the laptop at home, native iOS or Android on the train, the same single source of truth. PostgreSQL on the backend, JWT auth, cloud-synced.

I wanted one URL where my partner and I could open the month and agree on the number — Family Wallet is that URL.
Pasan W. · Solo builder & daily user
06 / The outcomes

From spreadsheet to shipped product.

Hard-to-fake numbers from a personal product still running daily — built solo, in production, in our own household.

10
Modules shipped
From auth to AI advisor, all under one auth.
2.1
Version live
Iterative releases, breaking the build only once.
$3.7k
Lifetime savings
Tracked & auto-rolled across finalised months.
100%
Solo built
Frontend, backend, DB, deploy & design — one builder.
Up next · 03 / 09

VSS Finance

A multi-tenant microfinance & loan-management platform — full lifecycle from origination to disbursement.