Ask HN: Are there any money-saving hacks that AI can assist you with？

[yeeyang]

AI Agents are becoming increasingly powerful – they can search online, make phone calls, and engage in ongoing communication with humans to solve complex problems.

So, think about this: are there things you know could save you money, but you don't do them simply because your time is too valuable and it doesn't feel worth the effort?

Perhaps these are the perfect tasks to delegate to AI Agents.

Let's discuss!

[kolinko]

I use Deep Research the one from OpenAI is amazing for comparison shopping.

E.g. I use it for stuff like "find me the best air cleaner available in Europe", or "List all WCS events in Europe in upcoming 2 months", or "find me a class doing xx in city xx that has the best teacher", "find me a presence sensor for home automation that does xxx".

I usually only care about quality - and it's amazing in finding good stuff. I bet if I asked it to optimize for price, it would save me a lot of money finding good value items.

Similarly with other optimisation tasks - e.g. "I like to eat here and here, and do this and this. Find solutions that are just as good, but way cheaper".

I mention Deep Research from OpenAI (not from Google, and not just chatGPT with search), because that's the only model I found that does a good enough job for me - I'd say comparable to me spending a day on researching.

[yeeyang → kolinko]

How did you come to believe it? Was it because it provided the corresponding link?

[ra → kolinko]

Wow - first time trying this... a day of researching saved, indeed. Very useful!

[gloxkiqcza → kolinko]

Can confirm, Deep Research works great and could definitely be used like this.

[BOOSTERHIDROGEN → kolinko]

How much quota do you have to be able to ask so many questions like that?

[aptj]

Recently someone shared in a group that ChatGPT (upon request to review a person's expenses to find ways to save money) recommended to cancel OpenAi subscription. :)

[faangguyindia]

I recently got a full-body health test done, and to my surprise, despite having six-pack abs and an FFMI of 25 at 18% body fat (confirmed via DEXA in Bangalore), I realized I was wasting money on food I didn’t even need.

Living in the Himalayan region, I often struggled to find relevant diet recommendations—Google mostly suggests European or American dishes with ingredients that aren’t easily available here. So, I took a different approach. I asked AI to design a diet for me that was not only nutritionally balanced but also cost-effective. I added constraints like avoiding pesticides, minimizing the risk of adulteration, and focusing on seasonal foods.

The result? I slashed my food expenses from a staggering $800 per month to just $200. More importantly, after eight months on this diet, my health markers remain perfect—no deficiencies, no issues. I feel great, and it’s the most sustainable way of eating I’ve ever followed.

But wait you can do it manually too right? Yes, but you need to sit with pen and paper and workout what each type of food contains, then balance and all that mind numbing stuff (and worst part is that you cannot quickly change and adjust for it in later meals which AI can)

[eesmith → faangguyindia]

Nutrition tracking apps have been around for a long time, and going back even further, people in the 1980s used spreadsheets to replace pen and paper tracking, letting them quickly change and adjust.

[egberts1 → eesmith]

Yuka app seems to not only include nutrition but rates each UPC-labeled food products by how much dangerous ingredients is in it.

[yeeyang → faangguyindia]

sounds great! It's totally worth making an AI agent.

[throwaway290]

> are there things you know could save you money, but you don't do them simply because your time is too valuable and it doesn't feel worth the effort?

This is the question that should be asked without all the "AI" buzz. If you use ML for your solution then use ML for your solution, I don't care. (What I don't want is to talk to a robot while using it)

[yeeyang → throwaway290]

I strongly agree with your point. Perhaps mentioning that I'm already using AI is what lessened the discussion from others. I am indeed focusing on those exact tasks: the ones that could save money but are hard to put effort into because time is so valuable.

[Stealthisbook]

AI necessarily offers strategies that are already available, and at this point can't be expected to reason out if anything is especially effective. There are services like rocketmoney that can identify subscriptions that you may no longer want or gain savings through mechanically gamed processes, and AI could certainly copy that.

[yeeyang → Stealthisbook]

You're absolutely right.

I actually built an AI Agent where I provide it with my bills and personal information.

It automatically makes the phone calls to negotiate with customer service reps on my behalf, helping me lower my fees or cancel subscriptions.

It has saved me a significant amount of time.

[fcatalan]

I wanted to get my diet in order, so I asked Perplexity for a nutritionally balanced weekly menu and a shopping list compatible with it and the store I go to, and it did pretty well in both tasks. On top of eating healthier and more varied, after a few weeks I noticed my weekly food bill was consistently down by about 20%

[flakeoil → fcatalan]

I suppose you could come up with the same result and probably better if you asked this question to yourself instead. I.e. by making a purposeful list in advance instead of just randomly selecting stuff while in the store.

[fcatalan → flakeoil]

The friction was high enough for me to not do it: Coming up with a week-long list of stuff that checks all the boxes: healthy, balanced, non repetitive, feasible in my cooking time, ingredients available in my store and I'll actually eat it... it's not a trivial effort, then condensing it into a shopping list is additional clerical work. This was just refining the prompt a couple times to see if I could get all those aspects considered.

Another factor is that having the menus come from an outside source keeps them 'honest', I wouldn't 100% trust myself not to include some of the crap I was precisely trying to get rid of If I made them from scratch

The result was surprisingly good... maybe not 100% right, more like 90%, but good enough to overcome that friction.

[000ooo000]

Can't you just ask an AI for a business idea? You think anyone here with feasible ideas revolving around access to chatgpt is going to share that with you?

[yeeyang → 000ooo000]

Compared to AI's ideas, I am more concerned with real human feedback.

[tomatovole]

Navigate cancellation menus with embedded dark patterns

[BOOSTERHIDROGEN]

If only deep research could help me find a rental in Australia, that would be awesome.