Amanda Smith is a freelance journalist and writer. She reports on culture, society, human interest and technology. Her stories hold a mirror to society, reflecting both its malaise and its beauty. Amanda's work has been published in National Geographic, The Guardian, Business Insider, Vice, News Corp, Singapore Airlines, Travel + Leisure, and Food & Wine. Amanda is an Australian living in the cultural center of gravity that is New York City.
If you've ever walked out of the grocery store with bags full of stuff that you didn't plan on buying, you're not alone. It's easy to get distracted in the grocery store, especially if you're hungry.
Spending apps and Excel spreadsheets can help trim the fat from your grocery bill, but these tools tend to focus on the total cost rather than identify categories you spend the most on.
Just like artificial intelligence can offer advice on how to save money on groceries, create alternative shopping lists and provide recipes for those ingredients, it can also review your receipts.
Because ChatGPT is the most well-known AI chatbot for giving advice, I used this tool to test auditing my shopping haul. OpenAI's ChatGPT was released in 2022 but has had various major updates, notably to the free version. There's a premium subscription for $20 per month, but the free version usually does the job.
First, you'll need to save your receipts from the last few trips to the grocery store. Make sure you have at least three to upload so you can get a better sense for how much you're spending over a certain period of time - a week, every two weeks or a month. This will help with future budgeting, forecasting and spotting trends.
Take a photo of each receipt (or download the digital version) so you can feed them into ChatGPT. As always with AI, you need to set the scene and tell it what you want.
I find with AI, it's best to give it one question at a time, so start by asking what categories you spent the most on.
Prompt No. 1: "Here are four recent grocery store receipts. I want you to tell me what categories I spent the most on. For example, meat, fruit and vegetables, coffee, condiments, bread, snacks, household supplies etc. Create your own based on my purchases."
When I tried to upload the receipts, I got this error, so I upgraded to ChatGPT Plus. If you can wait until the next day, you can continue with the free version.
This was ChatGPT's initial response:
It calculated that my largest spending categories were Meat and Seafood and Packaged Snacks and Bars, followed by Beverages. But it didn't give me my total spend, and I was curious to see how much it was without having to manually add it up.
Prompt No. 2: "How much did I spend in total across the four receipts? How much did I save by being an Amazon Prime member?"
ChatGPT's answer was that I spent a total of $182.53 across the four receipts and saved $2.69 by being an Amazon Prime member.
I quickly added the total amounts up myself to double check, and it was right. (AI is known to hallucinate, or confidently tell you things it's made up, so it's always a good idea to confirm the information it gives you.) It's also good to know I saved less than $3 in a week with Amazon Prime, which costs $15 per month. The goal is to have the membership pay for itself through savings.
I also noticed the categories came to a total of $140.25 by my math, so I was curious where the remaining $42 was. ChatGPT told me it was probably tax, a bag refund or "miscellaneous items...that weren't categorized explicitly." But after reviewing it again, it still couldn't find $34. ChatGPT seemed to also miss some key categories, such as Water. I asked it to review the receipts again, but it had a hard time with it.
ChatGPT listed out the items, but duplicated one receipt. I had to ask it for another redo, and once it provided the accurate list for receipt No. 3, I copied all four receipt lists and asked it to reorganize and recategorize.
Its categorization wasn't perfect. For example, it put mushrooms in Pantry and Packaged Goods, and there was $4.19 unaccounted for, but it was close enough.
With clear categories, I then asked ChatGPT to make this information into a graph so I could compare it visually.
It also gave me a pie chart option, so I clicked on that automatic prompt.
This is all good food for thought to help make spending more conscious. While I'll continue to buy quality cuts of meat, despite knowing meat and seafood account for over a quarter of my grocery costs, I can opt for a cheaper protein option from time to time, like tofu.
You could run these calculations once a month, as well as use this strategy for your restaurant receipts. Compile all your food receipts (groceries, restaurants, deliveries and coffees). You can re-create your most-ordered menu items at home to reduce your future food costs.
Don't trust ChatGPT's outputs without very careful review, especially for financial matters.
You can add it as an exploratory tool in your regular financial reviews, but be sure to fact check what it produces. And keep in mind that you'll probably have to manually re-ask it multiple times to give you what you want to know.
