Introduction
Avaris is a budget tracking application made for learning purposes. It began as a small project with PHP and grew to be something more refined. This is actually the second version of Avaris, and I plan to continue development on it.
Background
I started to work at the age of 15 for $5 an hour and would work every weekend. Yes, it was a little bit of money, but it eventually began to accumulate, and to me, it seemed like a lot. I basically used up all that money to buy junk food and sweets. At the age of 16, I worked at Legoland and made even more. My first paycheck was spent on the same day in taking my mom out to eat at the mall and a watch of the comic-book superhero, The Flash. I never really thought much about my money aside from spending it! At the age of 18, I got a credit card. I was responsible for a while, but then I got more and more credit cards due to the perks. I was getting FAFSA, so I thought to myself,
If I were to pay off my classes with my credit card, then I can just use FAFSA to pay it back.
Oh, what a mistake that was… I think I ended up buying a computer, and didn’t have enough to pay classes. I abused my wallet, and it never got better.
During my time at university in Santa Cruz, I have stacked up about $9k in credit card debt. I eventually got an internship at a large company called Guidewire, and let me tell you… the first time I got my paycheck, my jaw dropped. At 23 years of age, you’d think I would be more responsible with money. Nope. Aside from paying my rent when living in East Palo Alto, I spent that bad boy like it was nothing. I went to the lengths to buy an iPhone due to every tech bro using one. Well, I couldn’t afford a Tesla, but I could maybe afford an iPhone? Nope. I ended up buying a PC and a monitor just to play Valorant once or twice. I don’t even play games anymore. So, yeah. Don’t let me be your accountant.
Solution
Coming back home with $10k student loans and a $9k credit card debt, I had to do something about it. Especially when I work at an amazing company but near minimum wage. So… I tried to stop my bad habit. Ah, it would come up every now and then, but week by week I saw my debt get cut down. Today, March 2025, I am only in $2k debt. I have been going out to every 2 months or so, but every week I cut down my debt. Good, right?…
Future Plans
I don’t plan to quit here with Avaris, formerly known as BudgetTrak. I wrote this application in PHP for practice given that my job heavily uses PHP. However, I plan to migrate this application using JS. It took me 3 months to write this application, but if I did it with JS, it could have taken me one. Well, let’s see how the next one will be like! Stay tuned!
