We're always told that AI can make us money. But I wanted to know: can it help us save money, too? I decided to find out.
"Let's play a game," I wrote.
"You're a financial private investigator on a mission to help me optimise my budget by finding 30% worth of savings.
Ask me questions to get to the bottom of what's essential, and non-essential, and deliver a recommendation, based on the bank statement provided."
Claude, the generative AI chatbot, had: a list of transactions from my last three months' worth of spending (but no account data or identifying information).
I had: time on my hands to see if he could find me some savings to build up my emergency fund.
Spoiler: He found me more than $4,000 in potential savings.
Here's what Claude had to say:
"I've done a preliminary scan of your financial evidence, and I have some... questions."
Claude found 63 beverage purchases from three different cafes, and guessed that they were each coffee orders.
"Tell me honestly – are these all necessary for survival?" he asked.
Truthfully? No. Many of them are habit-driven.
Here's what Claude suggested:
1. Compromise on coffee:
Buy it on office days and weekends; otherwise, make it at home.
Potential savings: $60/month ($360/year)
2. Shop at cafes with loyalty cards:
The cafe I go to on office days has a loyalty card I could use to get every tenth coffee free. Claude thinks I should.
Potential savings: $12/month ($144/year)
3. Swap for a chai with honey:
Almond milk costs at least 50c more. Changing my drink order entirely could save me some money.
Potential savings: $15/month ($180/year)
"I'm seeing a pattern I call 'The Multiple Trip Syndrome.'"
He had me there. I hate planning, especially meal planning, and am more likely to duck into the supermarket every day on the way home from work than I am to have a week's worth of dinners ready to go. Girl dinner? It's a lifestyle.
No such problem for Claude, it seems. His ideas:
4. Batch grocery shop:
Swap a daily $25 shop for a weekly $150 grocery shop. Reducing 30 daily shops to 4 weekly shops massively reduces the options for impulse buying.
Potential savings: $100/month ($1200/year)
5. Keep a snack drawer:
Claude thinks I'll spend less on impulse buying snacks when I'm out and about, if I have a snack drawer ready to go. He's probably right.
Potential savings: $50/month ($600/year)
6. Click and collect on the way home:
Ordering online, and picking up, could help me avoid the inside aisles of the supermarket entirely.
Potential savings: $50/month ($600/year)
7. Sign up for cashback apps:
If I'm already shopping at Woolies and Coles, I can take advantage of store and targeted apps to receive money back from my purchases.
Potential savings: $45/month ($540/year)
Claude also had some simple suggestions about:
- No spend days - Claude suggested Sundays, because according to him, that's when I basically go into hibernation (I felt seen).
- Checking tomorrow's weather at night - I can save on public transport or booking a rideshare if I'm carrying my umbrella with me.
- Stocking up on emergency meals - Having some frozen meals on hand could help me resist Uber Eats cravings.
It's nothing groundbreaking – but it is personalised to me – and some of the ideas, such as only buying coffee when I'm on my way to the office, may not have occurred to me otherwise.
Personal finance AI prompts
If you're asking an AI a question, there are formats you can use that may be more successful to help you receive a response you find useful.
The Persona, context, task, format pattern includes four functions you can add to your prompt.
- Persona: The characteristics you want your AI to emulate.
- Task: The 'job' you're asking the AI to do.
- Context: Helpful information to strengthen the AI's response to you.
- Format: The way you want the output to be communicated.
Here are some example prompts that use this pattern for your entertainment only. We're not suggesting you apply these to your own finances.
(Full disclosure: Claude helped me come up with these. It's the only AI content used in this article.)
🔍 The Pattern Detective
"You are a data analyst specialising in consumer behavior. Examine my 3 months of transaction data and identify 3-5 unusual or interesting spending patterns that I likely haven't noticed myself. Focus on timing patterns (like stress shopping), hidden habits (multiple small purchases adding up), or category creep (spending shifting between months). Present as 'Surprising Discovery #1, #2' etc with specific examples and amounts."
📊 The Essential vs Extra Auditor
"You are a certified financial planner. Review all my expenses and create two lists: 'Essentials' (housing, utilities, groceries, transport, insurance) and 'Lifestyle Choices' (everything else). For items that could go either way, explain your reasoning. Present as a table showing monthly amounts and percentage of total spending for each category."
🔄 The Subscription Sleuth
"You are a recurring expense specialist. Scan my transactions to find ALL recurring charges - not just obvious subscriptions but also things like weekly takeout habits or regular shopping patterns. List them with frequency and monthly total. Highlight the top 3 I'm probably not consciously aware of. Format as a sorted list from highest to lowest monthly impact."
✂️ The Strategic Cutter
"You are a budget optimisation expert. Identify the ONE recurring expense that, if eliminated, would make the biggest positive impact on my finances relative to lifestyle sacrifice. Explain your choice with specific numbers and suggest how to eliminate or replace it. Be realistic about implementation difficulty."
🔄 The Swap Specialist
"You are a frugal living coach who makes saving money feel easy. Based on my actual spending, suggest 5 specific product/service swaps that would save money without drastically changing my lifestyle. For each swap, show: current cost → suggested alternative → monthly savings. Focus on swaps I could implement this week."
📋 The Budget Builder
"You are a personal finance expert creating budgets for real people. Using my actual spending as a baseline, create a realistic monthly budget that includes a 15% savings goal. Break down into categories with specific dollar amounts. For each category where I need to cut back, provide one specific strategy to hit that target. Format as a clear budget table with 'Current vs Recommended' amounts."
Should you take advice from AI?
When you ask an AI a question, it converts your words into tokens and then interprets them.
You can think of 'tokens' as being all the words (or parts of words, numerals, or punctuation) an AI knows.
So AI is making its best guess, based on its training, at the intent behind your question and matching it with what it calculates as being the statistically most common answer.
There's no one behind the scenes fact checking that what it says is true. That's why it's good practise to verify from independent sources that what you're reading is correct.
A low stakes question such as 'How can I save on coffee?' is less inherently risky than 'How should I structure my investment portfolio?'
As always, when it comes to finance, you should only take personal advice from a registered financial professional, such as an accountant, who knows your personal circumstances.
You also shouldn't share anything with your AI that you wouldn't want to accidentally rank in Google, such as identifying information.
