Student Expense Tracker

This project is a command-line Student Expense Tracker built entirely in Python using only the standard library, with no Django, Flask, or any web framework, and no database — all data is stored in memory using Python lists and dictionaries, exactly as required. It fully implements all four core requirements: users can add an expense with date, amount, and category (food, travel, recharge, or other); view all expenses in a clean tabular format; see the total amount spent at any time; and see which category has the highest spending, backed by a visual bar chart. As a bonus feature, the program also lets users set a monthly budget and automatically shows a color-coded warning when spending crosses that budget, along with a usage percentage and remaining balance. To satisfy the requirement that reviewers see output immediately, the program pre-loads five sample expenses across all four categories along with a sample ₹1,000 budget, and prints a complete report the instant it is run, before any menu or user input is needed. Beyond meeting the base requirements, the tool is designed to feel like a real application rather than a plain script: it has a colored dashboard, category icons, screen refreshes between actions, and progress bars, while still degrading gracefully (colors and clearing disabled) when run in a non-interactive or piped environment, which was verified through syntax compilation checks, a no-input run, and a full simulated menu-walkthrough — all completing with zero errors and a clean exit.