I'm building a budget app for my wife and myself.

Basic goals:

- Web based for zero update latency

- Have it work offline

- Automatically import transactions from my banks

- No running/hosting cost

- Secure

Tools used so far:

- InstantDB for the datastore, providing the offline capability too

- A gmail account that automatically gets forwarded bank alerts for purchases

- Gitlab.com w/scehduled pipelines for cron based email-syncing

- Netlify for the free hosting

- InstantDB magic codes / email links for securing the data

I'm at the point where I can track and categorize purchases, including split transactions.

Next steps:

- Add in date ranges for reporting / data views; e.g. show expenses incurred in a one month period instead of for all time.

- Add in planned / project transactions for month forecasting

- Statement import & import reconciliation and statement reconciliation

- Scrape company specific digital reciept emails (like Amazon) to autopopulate more transaction data

And that'll be the end of the stuff I can do for free. I think I will add features that require money and/or dedicated hardware though:

- OCRing receipts -> autopopulated transaction data / description

- Using chatgpt to suggest categorizations

- Scrape extra data from my bank sites, like physical addresses of entities involved in charges.