Simple Budgeting App

You can find this project at budget.zachbellay.com.

Source is available on GitHub.

What is "Simple Budgeting App"?

This webpage is a calculator to get an idea of how much money you can afford to spend on certain things. For example, a rule of thumb is to spend no more than 30% of your income on rent (ideally). This would be easy, if you knew exactly how much you make after taxes and then multiply that by 0.3. Fortunately, this calculates the state and federal tax that will be withheld from your paycheck and adjust your income accordingly.

What I Learned

• How tax brackets work and marginal tax rate
• Basics of React.js + Material UI
  • Dark Mode is easy with Material UI!
• A better handle on single page applications

Final Notes

This was a good project for me because I got a better understanding of single page applications. I am generally more familiar with server side rendered applications, such as in PHP or Flask + Jinja templates. The best part of this was that I actually use this webpage whenever I am doing napkin math budgeting. The most helpful has been in figuring out how close I am to spending 30% of my income on rent. But it has also been good in helping me figure out whether or not I really can afford whatever shiny new toy happens to catch my eye.