I Asked ChatGPT To Audit My Bills — Here's How Much I Am Overpaying
With 2026 about halfway in the bag and my New Year’s resolutions now a distant reminder of the fleeting nature of financial discipline, I turned to my favorite artificial intelligence (AI) assistant for help with a little budgetary spring cleaning.
I asked ChatGPT to audit my bills and highlight a few painless ways to cut spending. Since using AI is a get-out-what-you-put-in proposition, I offered enough information about myself for it to tailor the results to me: A self-employed homeowner in my specific region, earning my specific income, who thinks he’s still in college despite having no idea where his dusty diploma might be.
Here’s what it told me.
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I’m Leaving Big Money on the Table
The AI chatbot informed me that I could save around $6,000 a year “without extreme sacrifice.”
It first gave me a pat on the head for the things I’ve apparently been doing right — utilizing credit card rewards, conducting preventative maintenance on my home and Subie, paying an annual fee to Mint Mobile that works out to $15 per month instead of overpaying with a major carrier and using pay-per-mile auto insurance since I work from home.
However, the accolades ended there when ChatGPT forced me to confront some uncomfortable arithmetic.
I’m Apparently Very Hungry but Very Lazy
I interview experts and write a lot about how meal planning can save you money — but it appears that I mostly do it while shoving delivered pizza and lo mein into my face.
ChatGPT called me out first for my unjustifiable average monthly spend of $135 on what it called “convenience food” — delivery, take-out, drive-thru, etc.
ChatGPT suspected I’m succumbing to the “I deserve it because I work hard” mentality.
It’s wrong. I do it because GrubHub is easy and the kitchen is hard, but the end result is the same — more than $1,600 per year consumed by the one-two punch of gluttony and sloth.
I’ve Subscribed Myself Into Financial Insecurity
Next was my endless ocean of overlapping streaming subscriptions, which ChatGPT tallied at $116 per month. For context, a Deloitte report found that the average household spends $69 per month or $71 for self-described “fans,” on streaming memberships.
My total comes to $1,392 per year, which is even harder to justify than the food, because at least stromboli tastes good while you’re eating it. I’m still paying for platforms like Peacock, Hulu, Paramount+, Max and more, while scraping the dregs of the streaming barrel for something with Dutch subtitles and a passing Rotten Tomatoes score because I’ve already seen everything worth watching on all of them.
A CNET study found that the average household wastes $200 annually on unused subscriptions. ChatGPT and I both suspect that I’m wasting even more.
My Out-of-Sight, Out-of-Mind Insurance Attitude Isn’t Working
ChatGPT found a few thousand bucks in miscellaneous overspending across several other categories, but rounding out the top-three list of big-bite primary offenders were my long-neglected insurance policies.
I have auto, homeowners, life and health insurance, but they’ve been on set-it-and-forget-it autopilot since I first opened the policies. None of them are bundled and I haven’t changed any for years or even shopped around for better deals. The truth is that insurance is such a back-burner area of my budget that I didn’t even know what I was paying — or more accurately, overpaying — until the chatbot laid it out for me.
ChatGPT concluded by estimating that I could save between $800 and $1,200 per year with a few easy changes to my insurance policies.
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This article was provided by MoneyLion.com for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial, legal or tax advice.
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