I use YNAB (https://www.ynab.com/) for budgeting so I already had all of my financial data in a single source. Exporting the CSVs locally and asking Claude to be my financial advisor legitimately gave me good advice. Not just nagging me to save more (which is always useful), but how to organize my budget categories better, detecting longer term spending patterns I wasn't thinking much about, researching credit card reward programs based on my spending patterns, digging deep into interest and tax rates in way I never bothered etc.

That was the first time I felt like real people's jobs were threatened by AI. Financial advisors and tax accountants better adapt quickly.

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Terr_ 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>YNAB

I've fallen behind on keeping it up-to-date, but I feel I ought to plug anything self-hostable: https://actualbudget.org/

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throw0101a 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I use YNAB

I was happy to pay for YNAB4, which was local-only data. I have no interest in paying a subscription for YNAB5 when I have no need for cloud-access or cross-device syncing.

If YNAB5 was one-time purchase plus optional syncing, I'd consider the one-time outlay.

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mschild 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Financial advisors and tax accountants

Financial advisors giving generic advice, sure. Tax accountants though? I'd be careful. I know the mistakes that llms make when complexity gets involved (especially tax codes and laws) and frankly I don't know enough about them to be able to verify whether what I'm getting out of it makes sense. I could probably verify it with enough research but then I just could so it myself anyway. Or I just pay an accountant a smallish fee and let them handle it.

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mikeocool 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah, Claude told me what a great idea converting my LLC to an S Corp would be and how much I would save in taxes. When I asked my accountant about he told me it would actually cost me more, because of NYC taxes S Corps.

I didn’t tell Claude I lived NYC, because it didn’t occur to me that it was relevant. I find tax stuff is full stuff like this (often more subtle than where you live).

	▲	eks391 32 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This is exactly what I found when I was trying to get advice for some business decisions. My friends with businesses all live in different states/jurisdictions, and the biggest takeaway has been that any tax-affecting advice is useless unless it is tailored all the way down to your city.
	▲	foxtrot8672 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[flagged]

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burner420042 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I use Tiller. They take the transaction history from your linked bank accounts and store it in a google spreadsheet for you. That's it. $99 a year.

From there I unleashed claude on my spending habits. I'm only a few months in so I'm more focused on financial hygiene.

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dgrin91 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I would suggest also simplefin. Only $15/year. Its a bit more simple/restrictive (e.g. they only allow like 25 api calls per day), but if you are just doing simple personal budget tracking they are more than enough.

	▲	zrail 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I spun up a simplefin sync tool recently and they made some surprising errors with some of my accounts (incorrect sign, completely missing some transactions). Also they don't do investments, which is problematic when our primary "checking" is actually a brokerage account. I found SnapTrade[1] which gives away a free personal account with up to 20 brokerage connections (i.e. logins, not accounts). I'm using simplefin for credit cards and loans and SnapTrade for investment accounts. Seems to be working well so far. [1]: https://snaptrade.com

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daf72 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Nice idea! Do you mind sharing the prompt you used, interested in trying this out myself.