Lunch Sankey: Visualizing Financial Flows with Lunch Money
As someone who’s always been passionate about personal finance and data visualization, discovering Lunch Money was a game-changer for me. The app’s intuitive interface, powerful features, and developer-friendly approach immediately won me over. But it was a local Vancouver meetup that transformed my appreciation for the platform into something concrete.
The Vancouver Lunch Money Meetup
When I heard about the Lunch Money meetup in Vancouver, I jumped at the chance to connect with fellow users and the creator, Jen. The meetup turned out to be an incredible experience – a room full of finance enthusiasts, developers, and users sharing their experiences and ideas about personal finance management.
During the discussion, one community member (credit to them!) suggested the idea of visualizing Lunch Money’s transaction data using Sankey diagrams. The suggestion immediately resonated with me and the rest of the group – it was a brilliant way to represent the flow of money through different categories and accounts. The enthusiasm in the room was palpable, and I knew I had to bring this idea to life.
The Birth of Lunch Sankey
After the meetup, energized by the community member’s suggestion, I couldn’t stop thinking about how to implement this visualization tool. Sankey diagrams, with their ability to represent flow quantities through the width of their arrows, were indeed perfect for this purpose. What started as someone’s creative idea in a meetup became Lunch Sankey.
The project had two main goals:
- Create a simple, easy to use Sankey visualization
- Maintain the privacy-first approach that makes Lunch Money great
Building with Privacy in Mind
One aspect I love about Lunch Money is its respect for user privacy. When building Lunch Sankey, I wanted to maintain this principle. That’s why the entire application runs in the browser – your access token and transaction data never touch a server. The source code is also left unminified for complete transparency.
Technical Implementation
Building Lunch Sankey was an exercise in simplicity. I chose to work with:
- Google Charts for the Sankey diagram visualization
- Tailwind CSS for styling
- Vanilla JavaScript for the core functionality
The most challenging part was processing the transaction data to create meaningful flows. Lunch Money’s well-documented API made this much easier than expected.
Looking Forward
I’m excited to see how the Lunch Money community will use this tool and what insights they’ll discover about their financial flows. I’m open to suggestions and feature requests as the project evolves.
Why I Love Lunch Money
This project wouldn’t exist without both Lunch Money’s excellent API and the creative ideas from its community members. Beyond the technical aspects, what I truly appreciate about Lunch Money is how it combines powerful features with simplicity. It’s an app that grows with you – whether you’re just starting to track your finances or building custom tools for detailed analysis.
The Vancouver meetup showed me that Lunch Money is more than just an app – it’s a community of people passionate about understanding and improving their financial lives. Building Lunch Sankey has been my way of contributing to this community and bringing a fellow user’s creative idea to life.
Try It Out
If you’re a Lunch Money user and would like to visualize your financial flows, give Lunch Sankey a try. The setup is simple – just grab an access token from your Lunch Money developer settings, and you’re ready to go. If you’re new to Lunch Money, you can sign up here to get started.
I’m always open to feedback and suggestions for improvement. Feel free to check out the GitHub repository or reach out to me directly.
Here’s to better understanding our financial flows, one diagram at a time! 🚀
