Regret Tracker

Most expense apps are neutral ledgers. Regret Tracker is intentionally confrontational: it records amount, category, and date, then forces a second truth — whether you needed the purchase. That flag powers the guilt engine: month-to-date “you could’ve saved,” waste rate, clean streak, equivalents (coffees, noodles), and a pace warning against your monthly budget.

I built it as a personal Next.js product for daily logging on phone, with the same destinations on desktop via a sidebar. Auth uses bcrypt + a JWT cookie; data lives in SQLite locally and Turso in production.

Impulse spend is easy to forget once it leaves a bank statement. I wanted a lightweight daily log without bank sync — but one that surfaces unnecessary purchases as a measurable habit, not a buried line item. Needed spend still counts toward budget; only regrets feed the waste metrics.

Mobile chrome uses a fixed bottom nav (Home, Stats, +, History, Settings); large screens get a persistent sidebar plus Report and a primary Log expense action. Logging is a short path: amount → category chip → needed / didn’t need → optional note and date. History groups by day with search and filters; Stats covers month navigation, needed vs regret totals, month-over-month deltas, a 7-day breakdown, category bars, and PDF / Excel export.

Writes go through server actions (validate → insert/update → revalidatePath → redirect with a toast flag). There is no separate CRUD REST API. Protected pages call requireUser() themselves rather than a global middleware gate. Categories are Lucide-backed chips across Meals, Lifestyle, Digital, and Everything else. Exports use jspdf and exceljs behind /api/export.

Building the app was one thing. Using it every day was the real test. Logging amount, category, and that needed-or-regret flag made my spending harder to blur past — waste rate and a broken clean streak sit on the home screen whether I want them or not.

The honest takeaway: Regret Tracker raised my awareness. It did not spend less for me. The dashboard is a mirror; self-control is still the product. The app is a tool to help with that — not a substitute for the pause before the next purchase.