Building MoneyMov — A Free Personal Finance Tracker with MERN

Falak Sher — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 19:52:35 +0000

I recently built MoneyMov, a free personal finance tracker to help people understand where their money is going.

The idea was simple:

Know where your money moves.

Instead of building another complicated finance application, I wanted to create something simple enough for everyday use.

What Is MoneyMov?

MoneyMov is a personal finance tracker where users can manage their:

💰 Income
💸 Expenses
📊 Spending categories
📈 Investments
🤝 Committees / Bachat
💵 Lending / Loans

The additional modules are optional, so users can use only the parts they actually need.

For example, someone may only want to track expenses, while another person may also want to keep track of investments or money they've lent to someone.

Tech Stack

I built the application using the MERN stack:

MongoDB — Database
Express.js — Backend API
React.js — Frontend
Node.js — Backend runtime
Axios — API requests
Tailwind CSS — UI styling
Recharts — Charts and data visualization
JWT — Authentication
bcrypt — Password hashing

The frontend is deployed on Netlify, while the backend is deployed on Render.

Authentication & Security

One of the things I focused on while building the project was authentication and basic application security.

Some of the things implemented include:

Password hashing with bcrypt
HTTP-only authentication cookies
JWT-based authentication
Protected API routes
Environment variables for secrets
Forgot-password functionality
Hashed password-reset tokens
Token expiration
Helmet
Rate limiting
MongoDB input sanitization
HTTP Parameter Pollution protection
User-specific data access

For example, the backend doesn't simply trust the user ID coming from the frontend.

The authentication middleware verifies the token and gets the authenticated user's ID before accessing their data.

Spending Visualization

One of the dashboard features is a category-based spending breakdown.

For example:

Shopping      Rs 400
Food          Rs 1,200
Transport     Rs 500
Bills         Rs 2,000

The data is also visualized using a pie chart so users can quickly understand where most of their spending went.

Some Challenges

Building the application wasn't completely straightforward.

I ran into several issues during development and deployment, including:

MongoDB Atlas connection timeouts
Render deployment and networking issues
SMTP connection problems
Authentication cookies
CORS configuration
Express proxy configuration
SPA routing on Netlify
Mobile authentication behavior
Handling protected routes correctly

These problems were actually a useful part of the project because they forced me to understand what was happening beyond simply writing React components.

For example, deploying a MERN application locally is very different from deploying the frontend and backend separately.

You have to think about how each layer communicates in production:

Frontend
   ↓
API requests
   ↓
Backend
   ↓
Authentication
   ↓
Database

Each layer introduces its own configuration, security considerations, and potential issues.

Why I Built It

I wanted to build something that was more than just another CRUD project.

While working on MoneyMov, I got to work with:

Authentication
REST APIs
MongoDB
Deployment
Security
Email verification
Password reset
Data visualization
Responsive UI
Production debugging

It also gave me a chance to work through problems that don't usually appear when everything is running on localhost.

What's Next?

There are still several things I want to improve.

Some ideas include:

Better dashboard analytics
More useful financial reports
Improved mobile experience
Better transaction filtering
More visualizations
Exporting financial data
Additional security improvements
Performance improvements

MoneyMov is currently free, and my goal is to keep the core personal finance features simple and accessible.

Final Thoughts

This project started as an idea for a simple expense tracker, but it gradually became a much bigger learning experience.

The biggest thing I learned is that building a real application isn't only about making the UI work.

You also have to think about:

Authentication → Security → APIs → Database → Deployment → Users

That's where a lot of the interesting engineering problems begin.

If you're also building a MERN application, I'd be interested to hear what problems you've run into while deploying your project.

Try MoneyMov

MoneyMov is free to use. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

🔗 Website: https://moneymov.netlify.app

MoneyMov — Know where your money moves.

DEV Community: Falak Sher