The AI Money Audit
A free guide by Kamran Imam — Instagram · TikTok · YouTube
Everyone has subscriptions they forgot, price hikes they never noticed, and duplicate services doing the same job. AI is unreasonably good at finding all three — if you feed it your statements the safe way.
Step 0 — the safety rule (do not skip)
Export your last 3 months of statements as CSV from your bank or card app. Open the file and delete or blank these columns before anything touches AI: account numbers, card numbers, your name and address, and any reference IDs. Keep only: date, merchant/description, amount. That’s all the audit needs. Never paste raw statements with account details into any AI tool.
Step 1 — the forgotten-charge hunt
Here are 3 months of my transactions (date, merchant, amount). Find: (1) every recurring charge, grouped by merchant with monthly cost, (2) charges that appear to be subscriptions I may have forgotten - small, regular, easy to miss, (3) any merchant that charged me more this month than 3 months ago (price hikes), (4) categories where multiple services overlap. Format as tables.Step 2 — the honest sort
For each recurring charge Claude found:
Interview me about each subscription one at a time: when did I last actually use it, what job does it do, what else on my list does the same job? Then sort everything into KEEP / CANCEL / DOWNGRADE / NEGOTIATE, with the annual savings total per bucket.Step 3 — the cancellation session
Block 30 minutes. Work the CANCEL list top to bottom.
For each service on my cancel list, tell me the typical cancellation path and what retention offer they usually make - and whether the retention deal is ever worth taking.Step 4 — the annual number
Add up the monthly savings × 12. That’s your headline. Most people find $50–200/month on the first pass. Set a reminder to re-run this quarterly — subscriptions grow back like weeds.
Level up
Run the same 3-column export for your business expenses. The duplicate-tool problem is usually 3x worse there.
Related
Found this useful? Follow along for new guides.
New breakdowns drop every week across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. Free, no signup, ever.
← All free guides