Chat GPT Plus costs me $20 a month — using it to question my spending has already saved me more than that | Tech Radar

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

Canceled services and cheaper habits are comfortably covering the cost

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Paying $20 every month for Chat GPT 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 Chat GPT to justify its own cost using the finance feature it debuted a couple of months ago.

I didn't ask Chat GPT 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.

Chat GPT’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 Chat GPT Work on the web, you add the Finances plugin and connect whatever accounts you wish.

I asked Chat GPT to stop me buying things I don’t need — here's what happened

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

Only a couple of weeks after starting to use the feature, Chat GPT 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. Chat GPT found the repeated charge and placed it beside my other entertainment subscriptions.

A second recurring payment belonged to a music app costing

Canceling those two subscriptions saved

I stopped treating Chat GPT like a blank page — and it became more useful

I used Chat GPT to value my forgotten electronics and made $130

Chat GPT also spotted that my internet bill had increased by

The subscription cuts were easy to measure — I only had to cancel them once and the savings appeared again the following month without any further actions necessary. Food spending was more complicated because there was no single charge I could remove and forget about, but Chat GPT helped me save money there too.

Ordinary takeout is more expensive than ever, but it's the delivery charges and service fees that really raise the final number. I'm not going to stop ordering takeout altogether and deprive myself of all the dishes I can't make myself. But switching to pickup as much as possible would make a big difference, according to Chat GPT. And it saved me about $35 over the next month.

Chat GPT also picked up several trips to convenience stores. Each transaction was small, usually a drink or some paper goods I'd forgotten to pick up at the grocery store. Nonetheless, convenience stores are more expensive than the grocery store, and the result added up quickly, as Chat GPT found in its analysis.

Just staying aware of that fact changed my habits and made me more likely to remember everything I needed to get at my regular shopping run and to bring my own drink when hitting the road.

After two months, the changes were saving me about

I wouldn't blindly trust Chat GPT with finances or anything else. And I definitely wouldn't make it my first consultant for any big financial decisions. But these smaller changes are more important than you might think at first.

My Plus subscription still appears on the statement every month, but the reduced streaming and internet costs, not to mention fewer delivery fees, more than justify the $20 a month I'm paying for it.

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Eric Hal Schwartz is a freelance writer for Tech Radar with more than 15 years of experience covering the intersection of the world and technology. For the last five years, he served as head writer for Voicebot.ai and was on the leading edge of reporting on generative AI and large language models. He's since become an expert on the products of generative AI models, such as Open AI’s Chat GPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google Gemini, and every other synthetic media tool. His experience runs the gamut of media, including print, digital, broadcast, and live events. Now, he's continuing to tell the stories people want and need to hear about the rapidly evolving AI space and its impact on their lives. Eric is based in New York City.

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• News, deals, reviews, guides and more on the newest computing gadgets
• Start exploring exclusive deals, expert advice and more
• Unlock and manage exclusive Techradar member rewards
• Unlock instant access to exclusive member features
• Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards