I Tried ChatGPT as a Budgeting Tool. It's Not There Yet

It's official: there are way too many ways to spend money too easily in 2024. 

Not only is the urge to impulse buy supercharged by the litany of ads across our social feeds promising solutions to every possible perceived problem, but pay-over-time options and preloaded credit card information in our browsers barrel right through the flimsy barricade of financial responsibility.

At any given moment, you're a few clicks away from a purchase that could send you further into the depths of debt and the only thing stopping you is the angel on your shoulder pleading with you not to buy a new $300 mechanical keyboard. In my case, that well-meaning noob loses to the devil perched in a $600 gaming chair every time. 

Enough, I say! In an effort to get the spendthrift Satan behind me, I researched every budgeting tool and service purporting to leverage artificial intelligence to help people recover some control over their wallets.

The tools were all very similar, with tracking elements that required users to provide or directly connect their private banking and credit card information to the app or service. Lots of tools claim to offer AI integration, but they were all tacking on the buzzword of artificial intelligence when what they really offered was a basic chatbot that could only understand and operate with the limited information it was provided by my spending habits.

Since ChatGPT -- the conversational generative AI tool powered by a large language model so it actually "learns" -- could directly respond to my queries while leaning on the mass amounts of data it's been trained on, I hoped the combination of crowdsourced knowledge and specific budgeting parameters might be the best way to discover how to curb spending.

Here's where that experiment led me.

Read more: Stop Overspending While Still Splurging. How the $1 Rule Works

AI budgeting apps: are they for real?

I started by asking the free version of ChatGPT to give me some tips on how to financially manage a two-person millennial household making $200,000 annually. I based this amount on various results from news reports estimating the average income needed to live "comfortably" in my hometown of Los Angeles, give or take.

Here was the prompt: "Can you incorporate these questions and elements into an overall budget for a two-person millennial household making $200K annually? How much should we be spending on the categories of mortgage, groceries, entertainment, savings, trips and vacations, household expenses, shopping for clothes, and unexpected expenditures? We don't want to scale back on entertainment which is currently coming in at about $800/month."

I got the basic budget breakdown, with essentials like housing and frills like entertainment, shopping and vacations, and what the minimum and maximum estimated numbers would be for each, including the 20% of income savings recommended by financial advisors.

But there was no real guidance on how to keep myself in check when faced with tempting purchases. 

So, I went deeper and asked ChatGPT how I might remind myself to stay away from shopping too much, and surprisingly, the answer was more shopping. Kind of.

Shopping advice from AI 

ChatGPT recommended I apply something called the 24-hour rule and wait at least a day to think about it before making any large purchases. Kind of like a self-imposed cooldown period so you don't go on a shopping spree. "We can set up a system where you log potential purchases and revisit them after 24 hours to assess necessity," ChatGPT offered.

The tool also suggested considering the cool, extra expensive stuff you could buy later if you save up by not buying lots of the cool, yet more affordable, stuff now. The idea is you tell yourself you won't get the limited edition this, so you keep your goal focused on the ultimate platinum edition that, instead. 

I'm currently saving up for a bougie road trip across the country with luxurious hotels and lots of national parks. Saving my coins could mean the difference between sleeping in my car and traveling in style.

ChatGPT also recommended some bank and credit card integrated budgeting tools that alert you to spending limits like YNAB, Mint -- which notably no longer exists -- and PocketGuard, as well as using prepaid cards with strict limits to stop the spend, but none of them actually utilized AI in the way I was hoping. 

It even suggested other AI bots like Cleo, Trim and Albert, which can connect to your bank accounts and give you insights on your spending, negotiate bills, cancel subscriptions and give you personalized spending advice. 

What I'd like to see, though, is an AI-powered browser plugin that guilts me when I put items into my cart on an e-commerce site, or a chatbot that's capable of walking me through why I specifically can't afford to fly to the Maldives last minute just because I don't want to unload the dishwasher and got overwhelmed. 

Until someone creates an AI tool smart enough and responsive enough to metaphorically slap the credit card out of my hand, helping people curb their spending habits might be a job better handled by humans.

For ways that AI can actually be helpful, check out CNET's AI Atlas hub for pieces on how to use Microsoft Copilot to easily create notes on just about anything and how to use ChatGPT to find the job of your dreams.