I Used ChatGPT to Build My Budget. Here's What It Missed – CNET
ChatGPT can help you get started, but it shouldn’t be your only resource.
Kelly Ernst
Editor
Kelly is an editor for CNET Money focusing on banking. She has over 10 years of experience in personal finance and previously wrote for CBS MoneyWatch covering banking, investing, insurance and home equity products. She is passionate about arming consumers with the tools they need to take control of their financial lives. In her free time, she enjoys binging podcasts, scouring thrift stores for unique home décor and spoiling the heck out of her dogs.
Tiffany Connors
Editor
Tiffany Wendeln Connors is a senior editor for CNET Money with a focus on credit cards. Previously, she covered personal finance topics as a writer and editor at The Penny Hoarder. She is passionate about helping people make the best money decisions for themselves and their families. She graduated from Bowling Green State University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and has been a writer and editor for publications including the New York Post, Women’s Running magazine and Soap Opera Digest. When she isn’t working, you can find her enjoying life in St. Petersburg, Florida, with her husband, daughter and a very needy dog.
CNET staff — not advertisers, partners or business interests — determine how we review the products and services we cover. If you buy through our links, we may get paid.
Kelly Ernst
Editor
Kelly is an editor for CNET Money focusing on banking. She has over 10 years of experience in personal finance and previously wrote for CBS MoneyWatch covering banking, investing, insurance and home equity products. She is passionate about arming consumers with the tools they need to take control of their financial lives. In her free time, she enjoys binging podcasts, scouring thrift stores for unique home décor and spoiling the heck out of her dogs.
Tiffany Connors
Editor
Tiffany Wendeln Connors is a senior editor for CNET Money with a focus on credit cards. Previously, she covered personal finance topics as a writer and editor at The Penny Hoarder. She is passionate about helping people make the best money decisions for themselves and their families. She graduated from Bowling Green State University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and has been a writer and editor for publications including the New York Post, Women’s Running magazine and Soap Opera Digest. When she isn’t working, you can find her enjoying life in St. Petersburg, Florida, with her husband, daughter and a very needy dog.
CNET staff — not advertisers, partners or business interests — determine how we review the products and services we cover. If you buy through our links, we may get paid.
Artificial intelligence can make your life easier in countless ways, from planning your vacation to optimizing your schedule. It can also help you manage your money. The popular chatbot ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, can even help build your budget — a key part of any successful financial plan.
But AI doesn’t always get things right, as many hilarious fails have illustrated. Is ChatGPT really a viable way to build a budget? As a personal finance editor, I decided to try it out. Here’s how it went and my recommendations for how to use it.
These are the steps I took to test ChatGPT’s budget-making abilities.
To get started, you’ll need to give ChatGPT your monthly financial numbers: take-home income, expenses and savings goals. I already have a budget I made using Rocket Money, so to see how ChatGPT builds a budget from scratch, I had it create one for a hypothetical person.
My prompt:
“My monthly income after taxes is $3,500. Each month, I spend $1,000 on rent, $15 on renters insurance, $100 on utilities, $300 on my car payment, $150 on car insurance, $100 on gas, $200 on my student loans, $40 on my phone bill, $300 on groceries, $100 on personal items and $100 on dining out. I’d also like to put some money toward savings.”
The result:
ChatGPT ran the numbers and told me I’d have $1,095 left each month. I’d intentionally left my savings goals vague to see what ChatGPT would recommend. It suggested ways to allocate this amount toward savings, including building an emergency fund, contributing to retirement savings, paying down debt and saving for other goals, like a down payment on a house. It also showed me how I could split my $1,095 between these savings buckets.
I’d also intentionally left some spending categories out of my initial prompt — something someone creating a budget for the first time might easily do — to see if ChatGPT would catch them. It didn’t. So I asked it to help me.
My prompt:
“Have I missed any other common budget categories?”
The result:
ChatGPT generated a list of potential additions and suggested how much to allocate to each one. It then revised my budget with these numbers and told me I now had $645 left for monthly savings.
I asked how to allocate this amount to savings each month, and ChatGPT gave me new numbers, plus some tips on how to monitor and adjust my savings goals so they continued to meet my needs.
To avoid forgetting expenses, review your bank and credit card statements from the past 12 months to spot your regular monthly, seasonal and annual expenses.
There are several ways to track your spending and monitor how well you’re sticking to your budget, including budgeting apps and the old paper-and-pencil method. One easy — and free — method is to create a spreadsheet, which ChatGPT can also help you with.
My prompt:
“Create a Google spreadsheet for my budget.”
The result:
The first answer ChatGPT gave me was overwhelmingly detailed, with instructions on what information to enter cell by cell. I asked it to put my budget numbers into table format, and the result was much more manageable.
I followed the bot’s instructions to create a spreadsheet with this information, then made some minor tweaks like adjusting the column sizes. And voila, I now had a working budget.
Using ChatGPT to create a budget was pretty simple. It required some fine-tuning on my part, but overall, its recommendations made sense and were easy to understand. That said, it’s not for everyone. Here’s what you should keep in mind.
CNET Money brings financial insights, trends and news to your inbox every Wednesday.
By signing up, you will receive newsletters and promotional content and agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe at any time.
Here’s all of the excitement headed to your inbox.
AI is powerful, but you need to know how to use it for the best results. Here are some best practices for creating a budget with ChatGPT.
Don’t give ChatGPT any sensitive financial details, such as your Social Security number or bank account number. If you wouldn’t want to see certain personal information published online, don’t enter it into your prompts.
While ChatGPT can help you create a budget, it has plenty of limitations, and there are plenty of easier and more effective ways to do it. If you’re new to budgeting, simply Googling “basic budget” will give you lots of template ideas and tips. And if you’d like more guidance, budgeting apps are designed to do a lot of the work for you and help you stick to your budget on an ongoing basis.
That said, ChatGPT can help you with some of the basics you need as you tweak your budget, such as suggesting ways to trim common expenses and how much you should save each month for a particular savings goal. However, you should double-check any advice it gives you on more complex financial topics, such as how much you should put toward retirement for your personal situation.
Editors’ note: CNET used an AI engine to help create several dozen stories, which are labeled accordingly. The note you’re reading is attached to articles that deal substantively with the topic of AI but are created entirely by our expert editors and writers. For more, see our AI policy.
CNET editors independently choose every product and service we cover. Though we can’t review every available financial company or offer, we strive to make comprehensive, rigorous comparisons in order to highlight the best of them. For many of these products and services, we earn a commission. The compensation we receive may impact how products and links appear on our site.
Writers and editors and produce editorial content with the objective to provide accurate and unbiased information. A separate team is responsible for placing paid links and advertisements, creating a firewall between our affiliate partners and our editorial team. Our editorial team does not receive direct compensation from advertisers.
CNET Money is an advertising-supported publisher and comparison service. We’re compensated in exchange for placement of sponsored products and services, or when you click on certain links posted on our site. Therefore, this compensation may impact where and in what order affiliate links appear within advertising units. While we strive to provide a wide range of products and services, CNET Money does not include information about every financial or credit product or service.
