Case Study · 2.5 min read

Daily Wallet

Simplified Expense Tracking App

Daily Wallet is a React Native mobile application designed for straightforward, manual expense and income tracking, prioritizing simplicity and user privacy by avoiding bank connections.

App Store ↗

Project Overview:

Daily Wallet is a cross platform mobile application, built with React Native, designed for users seeking a straightforward approach to personal budgeting. It intentionally avoids direct bank account linking, focusing instead on simple, manual entry of expenses and income to enhance user privacy and security. The app provides clear transaction overviews, date filtering capabilities, and easy classification of entries as income or expense, showcasing expertise in delivering focused, user friendly mobile solutions.

Goals & Objectives:

The primary objective was to provide a secure and uncomplicated budgeting tool that empowers users to manually track finances without the complexities or security concerns associated with linking bank accounts. Key technical goals included developing a clean, modern user interface for intuitive daily overview and transaction entry, ensuring a seamless user experience through efficient state management, implementing robust date based filtering for transaction history, and leveraging React Native for efficient cross platform development and deployment to the App Store.

Approach & Process:

  1. Requirements & Design (Discovery & Research): Initiated with an analysis of existing budgeting apps, identifying a market need for a simpler, privacy focused alternative. Defined user requirements centered around ease of use and manual tracking. Translated these needs and existing design concepts into a functional specification and UI/UX flow.
  2. Development (Design/Development Phase): Built the mobile application using React Native, focusing on creating reusable components for UI consistency (like transaction lists and entry forms). Implemented core logic for manual transaction recording (income/expense), balance calculation, and date filtering functionality. Ensured adherence to modern mobile design principles for a clean aesthetic.
  3. Testing & Iteration (Iteration): Conducted user interviews and gathered feedback on early versions to refine the interface, simplify workflows (like transaction entry), and improve overall usability based on real user interactions.
  4. Launch & Maintenance (Launch & Delivery): Successfully prepared and deployed the application to the iOS App Store. Currently manage ongoing maintenance, monitoring performance, ensuring compatibility with OS updates, and supporting the user base.

Outcome & Impact:

Daily Wallet successfully launched on the App Store and maintains a consistent base of over 50 recurring users who value its simplicity and privacy focused approach. Positive user feedback highlights the app's effectiveness in meeting its core goal: providing an easy to use, secure alternative for manual expense tracking, free from the "noise" of more complex financial apps.

FAQ

Questions I get a lot.

Why go back for a CS degree if you were already at $170k?

Because the work had already outrun the paperwork, and I was tired of that gap. I’d walked away from two schools already — Baruch didn’t even offer a CS degree, and by BMCC I was already writing production code, so sitting through intro classes for a piece of paper felt backwards. I enrolled at WGU in 2024, kept the full-time engineering job, and finished the B.S. in August 2026. Third school. First degree, eight years later than the “normal” path. I wanted the foundation, and I wanted to close a loop I’d left open twice.

How did you get hired without a degree?

I showed work. The first scripts were for my dad’s business in 2017, automating the data entry that was eating his week. Columbia’s coding bootcamp gave me three months of full-stack JavaScript and a cohort in 2019 — a program that doesn’t even exist anymore. PLNETWORKS hired me in 2020 on a portfolio, not a diploma. After that, each role was about what I’d already shipped: production bugs, HIPAA software, storefronts. The degree came eight years later. It didn’t open the first door.

What actually moved compensation from $75k to $170k?

Two years of shipping at PLNETWORKS, then a move to Cazton that roughly doubled it, then BrightInsight in 2022 — HIPAA-regulated software at $170k. Same skills, different rooms. The market paid for proof. I treated interviews like case studies of work I’d already done, not like a plea for a first chance.

Where are you from, and where are you now?

I was raised in Jamaica, Queens. First thirteen years in an attic. I live in Hell’s Kitchen now. The city didn’t get bigger. I just moved west of the same story.

How do you actually use Cursor and Claude?

As a tutor and a pair, not as a ghostwriter. I still read the diff. I still throw away the parts that look clever and aren’t. The tools make the boring parts faster so I can spend the hours on the decisions that have to be mine.

What would you tell someone learning to code right now?

Build something your family can use. Put it in public. Don’t wait for a school to bless the start. I dropped out twice, then finished. Both of those were the right call at the time.