Piggy, my personal budgeting app, was designed to tackle common financial challenges with a simplistic and user-friendly interface. Initially created to manage my own finances, Piggy received an overwhelmingly positive response on Twitter with over 70,000 likes. As a result, I decided to make it available to the public for their use.

Piggy is still in the development phase, but I am actively working on it and hope to release it soon. I am building Piggy using TypeScript, ReactJS, NextJS, TailwindCSS, tRPC and Prisma as it is a stack that I am comfortable with and allows me to efficiently implement new features.

In November 2021, I began developing Piggy, a personal finance management tool, on a casual basis, and it didn't went too far. However, it wasn't until June 2022 that I decided to fully commit to the project, starting from scratch. The reason for creating Piggy was straightforward: throughout the years, I had tried various methods for managing my finances, but none of them seemed to suit my needs.

I had tried everything from the traditional approach of using Excel to apps from around the globe, but I always ended up discontinuing their use after a few days. That's when I thought to myself, "Hold on – "I'm a developer. I should be able to do this." So, I spent two weeks creating a minimum viable product (MVP). The MVP was relatively simple, enabling users to create multiple wallets, budgets, and transactions. Each transaction would update the amount of money in the wallet and the amount allocated to the corresponding budget.

Despite its simplicity, the response to the MVP was overwhelmingly positive. I posted about it on Twitter and received almost 70,000 likes on the thread. I also shared the news on LinkedIn, where it received 5,000 likes, showing that there is a huge untapped market for this type of tool. Many of the messages I received were from people who had experienced the same frustration as me in trying to find a solution that worked for them.

To build Piggy, I chose a serverless approach, using TypeScript as the programming language, ReactJS for the interface, TailwindCSS for styling, Prisma and PlanetScale for connecting to a MySQL database, tRPC for creating a fully type-safe Back→Front-End API, and NextJS to bring all of these elements together into a powerful application.

These technologies were carefully selected to allow me to develop new features quickly, with minimal errors, and in a way that allows me to scale the application without too many problems.

While it is still a work in progress, I am focusing on completing essential features such as bill payment and income tracking, cash flow visualization, and useful charts to help users get a better handle on their finances. Eventually, users will also be able to connect their bank accounts for a full financial history.