README.md

🧾 Personal Expense Tracker (CLI App)

A command-line application to help users track daily expenses and analyze spending patterns.

---

🎯 Project Goal

Build a Python-based CLI tool that lets users:

• Add and view expenses
• Analyze spending trends
• Save and load data from a CSV file

---

✅ To-Do List

📌 Core Features

• Add Expenses

  • Prompt user for expense amount and description
  • Save each expense with timestamp to a CSV file

• View Expenses

  • Display all expenses
  • Filter expenses by date range
  • Group or display by category
  • Format output in a readable table

• Spending Analysis

  • Calculate total spending (daily, weekly, monthly)
  • Breakdown spending by category with percentages
  • Identify highest and lowest expenses

• Data Persistence

  • Save all data to a persistent CSV file
  • Load existing data when the program starts

---

🛠 Technical Skills You'll Practice

• File I/O (CSV reading/writing)
• Python data structures (lists, dictionaries)
• String formatting & user input handling
• Date and time manipulation (datetime module)
• Basic data analysis and calculations
• Error handling for invalid input
• Menu-driven program design

---

🌟 Bonus Challenges

• Add category validation
• Implement expense editing and deletion
• Create basic visualizations using matplotlib
• Add budget limits and show warnings when exceeded

---

🚀 Getting Started

1. Clone the repo
2. Run the Python script:

   python expense_tracker.py