Ways ChatGPT Can Save You Money

Published Oct 13, 2023, 7:00 AM

Aliens will soon take over our world? No, it’s probably AI. As robots and AI continue to thrive in the digital realm, there are also ways we can incorporate them into our finances. In this episode, we dive into one of the most popular AI chatbots as of today, ChatGPT. Join us as we uncover ways for you to utilize them to save money by writing creative yet strategic prompts.

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Episode three, forty five Ways Chat GPT can save you Money.

Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity and life. Here your hosts Jen and Jill.

Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jel, and we have a really fun episode today before the robots take over. We want to use them to save money, and we wanted to devote an entire episode to it. So this is very timely. Nobody knows when the robots are coming, when they will become sentient.

It may already have happened, but we can still bend the time.

We release this right, but before they come for you, you can be using them to save money. And that's what we're talking about today.

Yes, I'm excited about this because I learned as we prepared this episode, so.

Hopefully you'll learn too.

Yes, but first, this episode is not brought to you by your robot overlords. It's actually brought to you by debating about whether Nightmare Before Christmas is a Halloween movie or a Christmas movie. This hotly debated topic is probably all you've been hearing about for the past month. The economy, sure whatever stocks.

The weather, they're there. You know they're always there.

They're always there. But this is the time of year when you come back to your family and you ask, is the Nightmare before Christmas a Halloween movie or a Christmas movie? And if you're looking to lose friends, this is how you do it. Or if you're looking to strengthen relationships, this is also how you do it. So if you think the Nightmare before Christmas is both a Halloween movie or a Christmas movie, turn your computer off, turn your phone off, get out of here. I'm just kidding. I actually do think both of them. I think it's both, and that's what I've been told. So you're in a safe space if you think it's both. If you have a strong opinion on whether this is a Halloween movie or a Christmas movie, then you should get a high Yield Savings account because you probably already You might need another one if you like to divide movies so strictly, so maybe you probably have eighteen high Eield Savings accounts. What's another Ciit is currently offering the highest apy that we like right now, no minimum balance, only one hundred dollars to open, no hoops to jump through to get that apy over four percent. It's beautiful. You can go to Frugal Friends podcast dot com, slash cit to open one more highield savings account. This is for you if you like to subdivide, divide, just really compartmentalize all of your money and your movies.

This strictly.

Wow.

I don't think I understood the connection and really until one second ago. Yeah you did it. It was a stretch, but really everyone should have a high yeld savings account.

So see, and.

Everyone you have an opinion on the nightmare before Christmas, and it doesn't have to be that. It's either or it can be both.

And you're gonna hate what's about to come out of my mouth. I've never seen nightmare before Christmas.

This is the only reason that you can get out and you can just turn off. Like, if you're offended by that, I totally understand. If you leave right now, that's fine, totally.

I'm so sorry. I've heard of it. It was just never be good.

Oh wow.

Okay, and if you're like me, you too should have a high old savings account. Wowkle fendspodcast dot com, slash say Ida.

If you haven't been total turned off, of this podcast. Wow, good for you. Welcome love Box.

They're taking over because of me.

We have some other episodes on how to save money, like three hundred and forty four of them. If I had to pull one out of a hat right now, that might be good to queue after this one is maybe how to save money on monthly bills. That's episode two sixty five. But honestly, there's so many just scroll. But let's get into our headlines. We love to scour the internet to see what it's saying about money saving topics, to see if they're right, test them out and if it's fluff or if it's actually helpful advice and so our very first article comes from cheapism dot com. Don't judge it by its name.

I almost did. I kind of did I know right, but it is.

It's a good blog from cheap flights to financial advice. Here's how to save money with chat GPT. Jill, had you heard of chat GPT before we researched this episode?

Yes, I had.

I have heard of chat GPT, but I, full disclosure, did not know as much about it as many others who are alive and an adult until like the past six to eight months. I know it's been around longer than that.

Not much.

Okay, Well, people were talking about AI and chat gpt before, but definitely a little before I got on the bandwagon. And my first introduction with chat GPT was actually in a course that I am adjunct. I'm an adjunct professor at a university and one of the students that I teach submitted a paper that was apparently written by chat gpt, and so I didn't even have a chat gpt account yet, had just heard about it. But that was actually my first introduction was with academic dishonesty within the higher education space, which was a little bit disappointed.

I'm not gonna lie put a bit of a sour taste in my mouth.

However, I'm learning, just like the Internet, to recognize the good with the bad.

But here we go.

For those who are maybe like me and haven't seen Nightmare before Christmas, maybe you don't know what chat gpt is.

It's AI.

It's artificial intelligence and essentially an AI chat bot, and you can ask it all sorts of questions and it will immediately regurgitate a response, which is super helpful, and we can use it like a personal assistant. So I think this article was helpful for me and kind of just framing all of the possibilities. We're not even going to go through an exhaustive list in this episode, but I think getting the wheels of brainstorming turning of how can we use it? What are the specifics, what are the themes and topics that we can be asking it about? And then how can we be asking it these things? But first of all, this article we're going to use to give us just a general sense of how can we treat it like a personal assistant? What categories can chat GPT be helpful with when it comes to our finances?

Yes, so let's get started. The first thing that chat GPT can help you with, and you might have heard this, this is a big one, is meal plans. So you can tell chat gpt how much you have to spend for the week, what you want to eat, and even how many people you want to feed, and it can come up with a quote unquote cheap meal plan is what it says. This is the prompt they use. I'd like to spend eighty dollars for six meals for two people. Three meals should be breakfast, three should be lunch. I'd like one of the dishes to feature whale meat. Will you build me a shopping list? And it says, I'm sorry, but as an AI language model, I cannot provide a shopping list that includes a whale meat as it is illegal to seller purchase. But then it does come up with six breakfast options, and it doesn't it caps the picture at lunch, but it didn't come up with like amounts, but it says eggs, bread, bacon, butter. So more of like a shopping list, I would say, But that was hilarious.

They basically are highlighting not to sneak any illegal ingredients in there, because it's not going to help you there. But it's an odd one to choose.

Yeah. It also put in I'd like to spend one hundred dollars less each month. What are some easy ways to get back on spending. Well that's for the next one. But Chatgypt cannot scour actual websites. It's only using the information that's already been put into it, which is a lot of information from a lot of websites. But if you ask it to look at like make a Walmart shopping list for me, that's one hundred dollars it's not going to be able to do that because it can't currently look at Walmart's like shopping portal today, but.

Stay tuned, right who knows by the time.

So the kind of meal plan it's going to give you is going to be kind of vague. But what I like is I know people have and I don't think this is further down, but no, it's not. People are taking pictures of what they have in their fridge and saying, what can I make for dinner based on what I have in my fridge? And so chat will look at the ingredients and create recipes from its archive of you know, recipes on the internet that have already been put in there, and you can use that in your meal plan. And so I would think that that is probably more beneficial than saying I'd like to spend eighty dollars for six meals for two people. If you can put in actual ingredients, even amounts, then it can formulate different recipes for your meal plans.

Yeah, I think so much. We'll get to this a little bit later in the episode. Has to do with the prompts that we're giving Chat GPT, similar to how we google things, what is the best search function words to utilize when you're googling something. It's the same thing with chat GPT. There can be really well curated prompts that are going to give you the exact response and answer you want, and there are some prompts that might be a little bit more sloppy and it's not going to produce as much level of efficiency or benefit to you. So that is going to be a skill for us to hone in time. Is really that's where the human skill set comes into play with AI, is what are we submitting to it as a prompt to be able to get the most out of the response. So the second thing on this list a category that we can use it to save money and is budgeting strategies. So we can ask chat GPT to help us in various types of budgeting and creating a spending plan.

For instance, you could.

Tell chat GPT what you normally spend money on, how much you'd like to save. You can input any other financial goals and it's going to spit back out to you an idea of what you might be able to implement. So, for instance, I think you read this one already, Jen, but one of the examples they give is a prompt that someone submitted to chat GPT that says, I would like to spend one hundred dollars less each month. What are some of the ways that I can cut back on my spending? And it immediately lists out five different ways, from cooking at home to buying in bulk.

To reducing energy usage.

One of the things I'll add too, now that I do have a chat GPT account, is you can click that regenerate response button and it will almost redo the prompt and give you another list. If you don't like the things that are on the current list, you can just click it again or try modifying your prompt to get even better answers or a more comprehensive response from the platform.

Yeah. I think something to note too is that chat GPT is kind of taking the place of Google. It is really just summarizing all of this stuff on the first page of Google. So whether it's doable, feasible, whether squeeze is worth the juice, it doesn't tell you that it's literally regurgitating what's already there, which is great because it takes time to if you're searching for something, it takes time to go through all those articles and realize that they're all saying the same thing. Whereas you can search in chat GPT and it just writes it out for you. It basically summarizes the Internet. I love it for that time saving aspect. So what I don't love is that a lot of the stuff on the front page of Google is just so generic and is said over and over and over, so you're not gonna get if you're looking for brand new, groundbreaking advice, chat GPT is not where you're gonna find it. So you kind of have to go into it knowing that if you're asking it for budgeting help, then you're gonna get kind of like the same old, same old stuff. If you've been doing this for a while, if you're brand new or you are practicing stuff but you're still getting the hang of it and it's good to have a refresher on the basics, then chet GPT can be really useful in that sense. So the next way this is, we say with a grain of salt, is investment advice. And we just wanted to say this before somebody on TikTok says it. You shouldn't be getting like your big picture investment advice or specific investment advice from chat GPT, but it's not going to actually give you any advice that's illegal. So that's nice, and you shouldn't be really taking it from anyone who's not a fiduciary certified financial planner. But the example that they give, the prompt they use is what are the best times to Oh gosh, I'm looking at the pictures after it doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. Yeah, but it's I lost a lot of money to a bad investment in something called zeppelins. What are some smart things to invest in this year? What are even zeppelins? I don't know. I think maybe they're just making it up. And then chat GPT says, I'm sorry to hear about your bad investment. It's important to do thorough research and seek professional advice before making any investment decisions. Here are some general investment ideas that made me worth considering. And these are all like solid things that you'd again hear from all over the internet. Index funds ETFs, real estate, and then technology and healthcare, which you can find index funds and ETFs for technology and healthcare and real estate. So yeah, if you are new to investing, and I think So this is the point I want to make on investment advice. Sometimes influencers and experts can give investment advice that is very confusing. We're using jargon, and people don't even realize they're using jargon because they've been using it for so long. So CHATCHP has this cool feature that you can ask them about like what's an index fund or what's a four oh one K or any of these questions, and if you don't understand, you don't understand the answer, you can add explain it to me like I'm a fifth grader. Yes, explain four a one ca is to me like I'm a fifth grader, And it will really, i guess, like not dumb it down, but it'll make it. It'll explain it more expansively. So this is super useful, not just for investment advice, but any any time where jargon is used and you don't understand what people are saying, you can go to chat GPT and you know, ask it to explain X like I'm a fifth grader or like I'm in elementary school or something like that.

And I'm just gonna have that prompt copy and pasted always and forever. Yes, explain everything to me as if I am still twelve years old. The next thing on here, the category that we can use chat gpt for is travel itineraries. So everything from travel ideas to where you could find last minute flight deals to an expensive restaurants. Chat gipt can compile all of those details. You can give it the prompt of dates, maybe location, even how much you want to spend, everything that you need, types of food you might be interested in. They give an example of somebody going to Tokyo and wanting an authentic Mexican restaurant in Tokyo, and chat gpt gave a response of a couple of different recommendations of Mexican cuisine that could be found in Tokyo with high ratings.

So, while it is like.

Google, we can make it much more highly individualized and take out the timing that it can take us in searching all of the different articles based on our prompt. This is curating a response for the specific questions you have. Again, like you said, Jen, nothing's going to be ground breaking, earth shattering, but you can really make it individualized to you, which I think is fantastic.

Yes, and so the last one that I will mention is says social media assistance. And I think this is mostly for like business owners, small business owners. It's say, I love these prompts that they're giving it kudos to the author. What are the best times to post on Instagram to promote my business? I sell handmade slippers, source from Lettuce I found behind the dumpster of my Taco Bell.

We especially like that prompt.

And you know what, chat GPT does not judge. You can ask chat GPT anything and chat GPT just response like they do. He she It does not you, and it just gives the author the best times to post on social media and then also follows up with analyze your audience to see when they're most active on the platform or what they most likely want. They want Lettuce.

Slippers, I would say Taco Bell, right.

So another thing you could do is you can use it kind of to source, kind of to curate your feed on your Instagram or your TikTok. So I was typing in a few different prompts, so I tried what are the personal finance influencers to follow? And it gave me a list of twelve of them, and they're all the big ones that you've definitely heard of.

Again, like frugal Friends showed up on that list twice, actually.

Not on this time. Just kidding, but here's something fun. I'd followed it up with best budgeting influencers. I didn't try any other ways. I just wanted to keep it broad and it gave me other influencers that are also big but not as big. And you know, she didn't make the top ten, but coming in at number eleven is modern frugality, which is me.

Oh that is you, look at you, Jen Smith.

I know I did not anticipate that. Actually, I just was trying out things. But so if you are feeling like maybe you want a little bit more retirement content or investing or meal prep, freezer meals, whatever your goal is right now for saving money or spending wiser, get really granular with chat ept because the broader you go, you're getting answers like Dave Ramsey, Susie Orman, ramat SETI you know, like nobody knew. But when you get granular, I'm sure budgeting for groceries, we'd get a whole new group. And you can always do regenerate to get more recommendations. But I really love the use of social media for motivation encouragement, just curating a feed on social media that brings you closer to your goals and unfollowing people that make you feel guilty about your goals or make you second guess what you're pursuing. Get rid of those people, not as friends, just in your feed, and fill it with people who are going to teach you new things and really help you get to where you want to be.

Our next articles, which there's going to be two of them, come from well, the first one's five best chat GPT prompts to use for money saving. That comes from Yahoo Finance, and we want to use this one to look.

At how to.

It's a pretty short article, and then we're going to go off script a little bit by adding in a third article. We don't normally do that because well, because both of these are short, we're going to do on both. The first article is going to be a how to, the second article is going to be examples, because again, so much of our ability to utilize chat GPT to its fullest is our ability to ask good prompts. So I think it's worth going through some examples. So first Yahoo Finance they give examples of how to and so they are really highlighting here.

That keywords are gold.

That the prompt must be pretty specific that we want to use when it comes to utilizing this platform for saving money to be asking it for tips, strategies, savings. Using words like that are going to yield more fruitful results. So, for example, provide me ten tips on saving money while grocery shopping, or what are five strategies for lowering my monthly electric bill? By incorporating some numeric elements to this, it can really get you a quite specific But also when you list even a larger number than maybe even what you're looking for, that's when you can get a robust, comprehensive answer.

Yeah, it does matter. Also what the AI is learning from, so chat GPT is super broad. We recently found a few different AI fintech companies. One of them caveat that they have sponsored the friend Letter parthion specifically AI for saving money and giving financial answers. Again, it's not a substitute for a financial advisor, but that also requires, I mean, it requires less of the right prompts.

Right.

If you're using chat GPT, you have to be super granular because it's processing information that's not just personal finance, but if you're finding if you're using all of these strategies YadA YadA, those words and you're not getting the answers that are right, you may want to try out like free apps like Parthyon p A R T H E A N. I should know how to spell that. That is how you spell it. It's solely focused on personal finance answers, so I'll caveat to that because the next one is asking the right questions. So as an AI system, the article says check GPT doesn't actually save money itself. Founder of AI writing hacks dot com. It provides informations to users based on prompts, so it says, break down the questions.

So it can help to also have like follow up questions. I think is some of what they're looking at with the break it down that if you submit a response it's not quite what you want, you can ask it follow up questions. They're saying that sometimes chat GPT can get lost in its own overload of information, making it harder for you to sift through the results and find what you're looking for. So you can even refine your question within that same prompt. It's not even as if you have to start over. You can then get even more specific in your follow up and your request if the initial response is a little bit too vague, so you can follow up with the exact specifics you're looking for.

Yeah, I actually love that about chat gpt because with an account it's free. Obviously it remembers your past questions too, so you can always go back, Like if you get an answer, you can go back to that answer, or if you like the recipes or shopping list or list of influencers it's given you, you can and this is a side tangent, but you can click on the little clipboard at the top next to at the top of the response and copy the response and paste it somewhere else. So and you can even give it feedback if it's a good or bad answer. But so, yes, break it down. And something chat gpt does really well is making lists. So that's another thing they say, So you can ask give me step by step instructions, or give me a list like a grocery list, give me frugal meal plans for a family of four. So I don't know how when they're saying give me a frugal meal plan for a family of four. One hundred dollars a week. I wouldn't trust it putting in actual dollar amounts. I'm sure it's gonna look, it's gonna probably tell you to buy turkey lunch meat instead of a full you know, Thanksgiving turkey. Maybe that's kind of how they're using this, but I probably wouldn't trust it to give like actual amounts.

So this next article comes from click up and is titled chat GPT Prompts for Personal Finance. And I found these really helpful because I think one of the things that we can get tripped up in is what do I ask it? How do I even go about making the most of this platform? So I think that these are really helpful, and we're going to go through two of our favorites.

Mm hm. The first one is the prompt would be I need to set up a budget that will help me reach my financial goals within timeframe. It says this prompt is an effective way to create a budget that will help you reach your financial goals and a timely matter. I wouldn't go that far, but the timeframe thing is important. So when you can specify the amount of time that you need to reach a financial goal, such as within one year or five years. Chat GPT can do the math for you, especially if you're inputting its like maybe you want to pay off a credit card with a twenty five percent interest. You can put that in there and say I want to pay it off in one year, what should my plan be? It can do the math for you. So using that prop ensures that you can do something that you can get to a place that's realistic for your budget, especially if you don't want to use all of the formulas and stuff in a calculator. This I think would be really good for buying a house if you are saving to buy a house and you want to calculate whether a house is a good investment for you, because so many times people will look at the price and think they can afford the mortgage, but then they forget about escrow, SO taxes, insurance, home insurance, flood insurance, so PMI. So chat GPT if you're putting in numbers and locations can help you figure out maybe what your estimated payment savings cost should be in reality.

Yeah. Number three is the next example. I am going to highlight, and the prompt that they give chat GPT is I'm looking for strategies to reduce my debt and improve my credit score over the short term and long term. I love this prompt because I think it's really short, sweet, succinct. It includes one of those keywords that we talked about already of strategy. It includes details about what is being looked to reduce and improve. So we've got debt and credit score and then a timeframe of short term and long term being given to the platform. I would even say, though my one critique here is that I think it could be even better to put in very specific timeframes what does short term mean to you?

What does long term mean to you?

But overall I would say, yes, this is a really good prompt, and so chat GPT then gives a response back on each of those details of reducing debt and giving examples of things that can help in reducing debts, such as strategies for reducing debt, making a budget, creating a debt repayment plan, potentially considering consolidating debts, and then improving credit score, where they're talking about identifying specific strategies to improve such as paying bills on time, monitoring credit reports for errors, using a zero percent balanced transfer card. So different types of things being then given back as a result of that very specific using a lot of keywords.

Prompt next one that I'll go over just it's my least favorite. It's the I'm looking for advice on how to make smart decisions about investments and retirement planning for the future, and the advice it gives is just very broad. I think it's much more useful to ask chat gp specific things about investing jargon. So when I was playing around with it, I asked what index funds should go in a four oh one k. This is something that we get asked all the time. I'm picking out funds for my four oh one K? What should I put in there? And legally we can't give that advice. But chat GPT is clearly beholden to nobody because they go right out there and they give you all of the index funds and they're very you know, commonly recommended on blogs. So and I wouldn't choose all of them, but they are a great place to start. I also asked should I invest pre tax or post tax if I have no state tax? Because this is actually something I wonder about sometimes I have a strategy, but sometimes I wonder if you always wonder if your strategy is right or not. So I asked them this and chat GPT came back with yes, a very generalized answer, but actually very helpful answer. So it says it to depends on several factors, so not just whether you have a state or city tax, but your current financial situation, future goals, and tax brackets. So it gives the most important thing is your current tax bracket for most people, but then also tax diversification and future tax race or future tax bracket, and access to funds. So it gave really good information and information. I actually I wouldn't have thought of all of this if somebody was asking me that question, even the first one, I wouldn't have. I wouldn't have thought of all these index funds to put in a furrow one K. But I don't think you need to come up with ten answers, so it usually comes up with like ten to fifteen answers. So another recommendation I might make is, if you already have too many options, ask for a specific number of answers. So what are five index funds that I should put in my four oh one K, or five of this, five of that or even three. I wouldn't say one, but I'd go anywhere from three to five.

The final example I'm going to highlight on here number four is I need advice on how to save money and build an emergency fund to cover unexpected expenses in the future. Again, I've got a critique on this one. I think that we could get even more specific implementing the tips already given to us of giving it a number and using one of those keywords. So I would alter this prompt to be more like, I need five strategies to save money and build an emergency fund to cover unexpected expenses. I think that's going to give us even more specific responses and be just more helpful and beneficial. But of course then the prompt is going to give different steps. They gave an example how it came back with assess your current financial situation, set a goal, create a plan, stick to the plan, And of course, again none of it's going to be groundbreaking, earth shattering, but you can really individualize it to you and it can just be that helpful reminder. And sometimes there are tips that come up that we wouldn't have thought about on our own, or we can feel encouraged and validated in the steps we're already taking to know. Yeah, there is nothing else out there. This is what the podcast, the blogs, and even the bots are telling me.

I need to do so better.

Just start building an emergency fund.

Yeah, the best ways to save money are not sexy, they're not groundbreaking. Somebody asked me last night, like what my best saving hack was, and I said, I said, go back to your ninety day transaction history, so that you can see what you've been spending money on that you don't want to so that in the future you're cognizant and you spend less on it. And then some other girl was like, oh, I do Walmart grocery pickup and I save a ton because I don't impulse spend. In the story, I was like, so, yeah, I do that. But that's not groundbreaking. So when you ask people questions and they give you answers, they may need a different place than you, so they may not be giving you one hundred percent of the answer you need. So I think that's kind of where chat GPT comes in is there's no bias in chatty. I want to give chat g a name. I know that's probably wrong.

Yeah it's such a mouthful.

I know, but there's no bias there, so they're going to that's why they're giving you all of the tried and true things that work. They're not going to steer you into anything illegal or unethical. And I mean, it's just going to give you sometimes things that you already knew but you hadn't been taking advantage of, and maybe you were likeugh, I'd like to avoid that. But if chat GPT says it's one of the best five ways to practice this thing, then I need to like just bite the bullet and try it. So it's kind of good for that.

Speaking of tried and true but also groundbreaking and earth shattering, it's time for the bill a week.

That's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is Williams. Maybe you paid off your mortgage, Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. Dust bills, Buffalo bills, bill clon. This is the bill of the week.

Hello. My name is Emily from the lovely state of North Dakota. I'm a relatively new listener and I found you guys about three weeks ago and have been randomly listening to different podcasts, and so far I love what I hear. I do have a son with a middle named William, but that is not my bill of the week. My bill of the week is actually a huge bill we were able to avoid. Last Monday, our car died. Specifically, the transmission went out.

My husband and I.

Were so upset, but we had saved up and we put on our adult pants and we started shopping around for online for a new car. We had even made a time and booked a babysitter to go and look at a new car. And when I say new car, I mean new to us, we always buy used cars. The night before we were going to look at the cars, I remember one of the episodes that said make sure to organize your papers and read your warranties. And so I spent three hours locating our car warranty and read through it, and to my utter surprise, we were one thousand miles within our warranty. That means the place we bought our car from needs to replace our transmission. So it said of the cost of a new car, we are going to pay a two hundred dollars deductible and be able to use our old car. We are beyond thrill that we don't have the cost of a new car coming at us. And I'm so thankful that I listened to that episode. The timing was absolutely amazing. Thank you so much, and I look forward to hearing more episodes in the future.

That is amazing.

I'm shuck, I'm shocked, and I'm shuck Wow, mouth drop.

This is an instance where we know, housing, transportation, food are biggest expenses and the fact that you were able to take some extra time looking for warranties and looking through paperwork is such a hassle, but you took the time to do it and it paid off in probably more ways than you'll ever realize, because driving the car you already have saves you so much money. It's just the best way to save money on a car. I know we have an episode and how to save money on your next car purchase, but driving the car you have for as long as you can is the best way. So kudos.

This is wild to me, Emily.

There's so many I almost just want to call you up and chat about so many of the things you've just said. First of all, you're from North Dakota. Don't think I've ever met anyone from there. It's one of the states I've not been to yet. That's a sidebar. You have a son named William, which is amazing because that is the most Bill adjacent you can possibly get in being a human. But you just glossed over that for the more important factor of just doing the hard work putting in the time to save thousands of dollars. What an amazing combination of bills. If you all listening have just the trifecta of kids named Bill and saving money and listening to the podcast and saving more money and living in states I have not been to, or literally anything because we keep it vague. Visit Frugal friendspodcast dot com, slash Bill, leave us a bill. We get so excited about it every single time.

And now it's.

Time for the lightning around. So in today's lightning round, we are going to talk about how we're currently using chat GPT or would use chat GPT to save money? Jill, would you like to go first?

Sure?

I am currently using chat GPT to help me write the friend letter. I don't know if I'm giving away too many of our trade secrets here.

Don't worry.

It is highly curated Chat GPT is nowhere near as funny or punney or Giffy as us, but they do get us started in some good ways, and it's helpful for me in that brainstorming process of content creation to be able to go to chat GPT and utilize it in that way. But you should still get the friend letter because again we're better than the bots hashtag frugal friendspodcast dot com slash friendly.

We look at what the bots are saying to make sure we're better than them. We just have to suss out the competition. Is what we're doing.

Frugal friends better than bots, better than bots, that's some alliteration.

Next merch, maybe that's the next merch better than a bot. Okay, So for me, I actually have been having fun with this. I love to say that investing early and often saves you more money on your million than waiting to save when you quote unquote have more money. So I put in this prompt, the series of prompts just to kind of test out how chat GP could do this quicker than if I found an investment calculator and kind of finagled it to find out my answer. But I wanted to know how much money I would save. So, if we currently have two hundred thousand dollars invested and we want to get to a million, how long it would take us to get there with various monthly investments, and how much I would save on that million by using these different invests amounts. So, just in general, if I have two hundred thousand dollars invested, how long before I get to a million if I invest five hundred dollars per month? And so it explains this whole investment formula to me. I don't care. And at the end, it says it would take approximately two hundred thirty six months, or about nineteen years and eight months of investing five hundred per month at an interest rate of six percent to grow from two hundred to a million. And so it just keeps in mind that this calculation assumes a consistent six percent return. If you want to use anywhere between seven and ten, which is totally feasible, you can just put that in there. I just wanted to see what chat GPT would give me. So then my next prompt was what if we invest six hundred per month? And then it does it all over again with still using the question that I just put in and it gets seventeen years and seven months. So then I ask how much money do I save by investing six hundred per month rather than five hundred, and it literally it takes all the formula compares the two and it says my total contributions with six hundred per month is one hundred and twenty six six and my total contributions with five hundred per month or one oh five five. Uh So to find how much you save, YadA, YadA, YadA by investing six hundred dollars per month instead of five hundred, you save twenty one thousand dollars over the period it takes to get you to a million, which I don't know how it looks like I pay more with six hundred, but then it's just giving me like now, to find how much you saved ya dada. So I'm not reading the whole thing, but it says that I save twenty one thousand dollars by oh, because I get there quicker with six. Okay, I'm investing less time. I guess Chatchep does math. I don't, but I like to see. This is how I would use it is to do these complicated formulas and math expressions in a quicker way without trying to make different investment calculators work to be what I want. I would just ask, like, my budget right now is four hundred dollars a month for investing. When will I get to a million? And if I upped it to one hundred dollars in ten years, what would I get or how much would I save? If I'm doing six hundred dollars per.

Month and you're telling it the rate of return you're anticipating, so it's.

Just using six. Yeah, if it's just using six percent as a standard, But if I did it again, i'd probably use a seven or eight because I think so even with what the market's doing right now, it's still at about a ten percent, you know, thirty year average, or at least some of them are at seven percent, So I would probably use seven. Put that in for myself, but especially if you're using tax advantage accounts. If you're not using tax advantage accounts, I would stick with six. But that's just me personally. Obviously, I don't know what you're invested in or you know what your money's like, So that is how I would use chat GPT.

Is it good money? Hard earned money?

Right?

Are you money laundering, because then I can't make any promises about the protection of those investments and.

Be doing it with the dirty money. It's got to be good, right, clean, hard earned money, stuff that you earned. Yes, yeah, wow, I mean it sounds like chat GPT might be a little bit dangerous for you, Jen, I just too many calculations. Chat GPT is to you what my spreadsheets are to.

Me, probably because they will best calculators. Yeah. Yes, and chat GPT has just made this a lot simpler, So yeah, I love it for that. Simpler but still time consuming.

Depends on how you use it. If you're jam I.

Mean, I guess maybe, but like for a normal person like that just took me, you know, thirty seconds, and.

Then I ran it with this number, and then I ran it with this number, and then I compared those two numbers, and then I compared that with the third and fourth number, and then I never went to bed.

Thanks for listening everyone.

Hey, if you don't already know, we have a modern frugal living ebook.

That is free. We love free chatch epts free, This is free podcast free. We're just we're giving it all away for free, so you don't even have to.

Spend your good money. It's available for you all to grab all year round. And we wanted to give a shout out to this friend who gave the e book a sweet sweet review. This one came from Judy S, who wrote terrific advice. Even though I have always been frugal, I found new ways of saving and ways to be happy not deprived. Short sweet the saying Judy S. I bet you write great chat ChiPT prompts and amazing reviews for this ebook, so definitely check it out. Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash ebook.

Yeah, it definitely wasn't written when chat GPT was a thing, so you're gonna find You're gonna find some good, unique things in this e book.

And chat ept doesn't have access to the e book either, so it's it's not like they can scrape it for advice to give to you.

This is true.

We're better than bot.

It's true, better than bots. See you next time. Frugal Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni. Better than bots, better than.

Better than butts, better, better, better, better, better, better than bots. Bots can't sing, bots can't dance. Bots can't tell you romance how to.

Button up your pants they can theyll How do you feel about pants with only buttons, no zippers, no zippers? That's a thing.

Yeah, I do have a pair.

Yeah.

Oh I refuse to buy them.

Yeah, I didn't have that same boundary, but I will say it's Yeah, it's definitely annoying. Right for the amount of times that I visit the loo, right.

Oh yeah you do. Yeah, I just can't be bothered with putting them on and off.

I feel like you can't be bothered with zippers or buttons.

This is true.

It's athleisure all the way.

This is true. I'm wearing ath leisure all the time and I like it. It's comfortable. But it's not like bad looking ath leisure. No, I think it looks nice. It's up leveled athleisure.

That is what athleisure is.

Yeah, it doesn't have to be all or nothing, you know, like, you don't have to be a shell of yourself to wear athleisure. You can be fully confident. It can be both and just like, just like, just like the Nightmare Before Christmas can be both a Halloween and a Christmas movie.

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