As well as a bit of self control, and more awareness of my spending. Actually, I am not too effected by this so called recession either to be honest, I am just spending too much money, so something that allows me to manage my money better, and learn coding more is a good thing.
I have been feeling a little down lately, so this helps keep my mind busy too, but I digress. So the plan!
Create a website written in PHP to track my finances, and present the information in easy to read reports.
- Web Based Application
- Import Natwest CSV Files
- Automatically Parse Data
- Display Cash Flow Report
- Display Outgoing Summary
So lets say once a month I log into my online banking website and download my credit card and current account statements as .csv files. Then I upload them into my app and it processes all of the months transactions.
Now when I view the information from my app, I will be able to see my outgoings by category easily. So I will quickly see how much money I spent on food, as it automatically adds together all of my cash withdraws, and supermarket transactions for example.
The end result will be that I can both easily see how well I am doing with my self control, and also be able to see my cash flow hopefully increase month after month as I start to save money.
Such information would be formatted in a way where I could quickly spot areas, or categories where I think I am spending too much and could save more money, by keeping things in perspective and allowing you too maintain seeing the bigger picture.
- Learn PHP Properly, Back to the basics to learn how to code well, and to a high standard.
- Design Specification, Decide on everything it should do.
- Write Application, Spend time working on writing the application.
- Profit, Enjoy the benefits of more controlled spending.
Granted, by the time I finish, this recession may be over but at least I will then have something I can use to quickly monitor my finances for the foreseeable future.
