ChatGPT Plus costs me $20 a month — using it to question my spending has already saved me more than that

Paying $20 every month for ChatGPT Plus has always been easy to justify professionally.

I use it for research, document analysis, and more than a little organizational assistance around the house.

Still, it's another monthly subscription at a time when everyone is looking for ways to reduce the amount repeatedly drained from their bank accounts.

That's why I've been pressing ChatGPT to justify its own cost using the finance feature it debuted a couple of months ago.

I didn't ask ChatGPT to defend its place on my credit card bill literally, though it probably could.

Instead, I prompted it to use its analysis of some of my finances to identify places where my money might be evaporating without enough justification, or even awareness.

ChatGPT’s finances tool can review connected accounts, including spending.

Although it can't make any changes to how the money moves around, it can point accusingly at a subscription, leaving me to cancel it myself.

If you haven't done so, the setup is straightforward enough.

Using ChatGPT Work on the web, you add the Finances plugin and connect whatever accounts you wish.

You can analyze recent spending right away, but I've found the weekly update from ChatGPT and nearly real-time updates to be particularly useful in my quest to make ChatGPT Plus cover its own cost.

Subscription cuts Only a couple of weeks after starting to use the feature, ChatGPT raised in its weekly report that one of my streaming services seemed abnormally expensive.

It turned out to be due to an add-on costing $11.99 a month.

I had subscribed to watch one particular series, finished it, and then apparently just left the subscription in place.