How I Built a Complete Finance Dashboard – From a Node.js App to Hermes Integration

The Problem

I never really knew how much money I was spending. Sure, I could check my banking app. But I had no overview: What goes to fixed costs? Food? Random stuff? How much is actually left at the end of the month?

Excel spreadsheets worked at first, then got too cumbersome. Finance apps were either expensive or didn't do exactly what I needed.

So I built my own dashboard: MySalary. Node.js, deployed on my VPS, with a Telegram bot that logs expenses when I send a message. No bank APIs. No Plaid, no TrueLayer. The data comes from me — one sentence after paying, and it's logged.