OpenAI · May 15, 2026 · 11 min read

A new personal finance experience in ChatGPT

Mirrored from OpenAI for archival readability. Support the source by reading on the original site.

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May 15, 2026

Product

A new personal finance experience in ChatGPT

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Today we’re releasing a preview of a new personal finance experience in ChatGPT to Pro users in the U.S. Now you can securely connect your financial accounts, see a dashboard of where your money is going, and ask ChatGPT questions grounded in your financial context – all while staying in control of your data. We’re starting with a preview to a smaller group so we can learn from real-world use, improve the experience, and expand thoughtfully.

Money touches nearly every part of life: where we live, what decisions we make, how we care for loved ones, what future we imagine. But managing finances today often means piecing together accounts, apps, cards, loans, and spreadsheets just to know where things stand. Even then, it can be hard to see the full picture or know what to do next.

People are already turning to ChatGPT for help: more than 200 million people come to ChatGPT every month for budgeting, questions about their investments, comparing different paths, planning for future goals, and more. Recent advances in GPT‑5.5 make ChatGPT stronger at reasoning through the complex, context-dependent questions that personal finance often requires.

With your financial accounts connected, ChatGPT can combine that reasoning with your real financial context and what you’ve shared about your goals, lifestyle, and priorities, helping you spot patterns, understand tradeoffs, and plan for big decisions in a way that feels more personal and complete. Now you can ask questions like:

Mobile app showing a personal finance assistant creating a five-year home-buying plan based on the user’s finances and Chicago housing market data.

ChatGPT can help you stay informed and feel more confident managing your finances, but it is not a replacement for professional financial advice.

Starting today, we’re rolling out the ability for Pro users in the U.S. to connect their financial accounts in ChatGPT on web and iOS, with support for more than 12,000 financial institutions. We’ll learn and improve from early use before rolling it out to Plus, with the goal of making it available to everyone.

How to get started

Connect your financial information

To get started, open Finances from the sidebar in ChatGPT and select ‘Get started’ or start a conversation from anywhere in ChatGPT by saying ‘@Finances, connect my accounts’.

ChatGPT will then guide you through securely linking accounts through Plaid, with Intuit support coming soon. After you authenticate, ChatGPT will begin syncing and categorizing your data, which may take a few minutes.

Four mobile app screens showing the process of connecting financial accounts to ChatGPT

Once your accounts are synced, you can see a dashboard that gives you an up-to-date view of where you stand across portfolio performance, spending, subscriptions, upcoming payments, and more.

Beyond connected accounts, you can share important context about your financial life, like a mortgage, a savings goal, or a major purchase you’re planning for. For example, you might tell ChatGPT: “I’m saving up to buy a car early next year” or “I still owe my parents [X amount] for the loan they gave me.” ChatGPT can save that context to your Financial memories to inform future conversations.

That broader context is part of what makes this experience useful – instead of treating each question in isolation, ChatGPT can help connect the dots across your accounts, your goals, and what you’ve already shared, so the guidance is more personal and complete.

Without Finances connected

Help me come up with a plan to save a little bit more in the next few months.

Here’s a practical way to save a bit more over the next 2–3 months without making your life miserable.

1. Pick a specific target

Make the goal concrete and time-bound.

Examples:

“Save an extra $1,500 by August.”
“Build a one-month emergency cushion.”
“Save enough for travel / taxes / moving / investing.”

A vague goal like “spend less” usually fades quickly.

2. Focus on the 3 highest-impact categories

Most people don’t need to optimize everything. Usually 70–80% of extra savings comes from a few categories:

Food & delivery

Good targets:

Reduce takeout from 5x/week → 2x/week
Bring coffee/lunch a few days per week
Set a fixed “fun food” budget

Even a small reduction here can free up a few hundred dollars monthly.

Subscriptions & recurring charges

Look for:

Duplicate streaming/services
Annual plans you forgot about
Apps you rarely use
Higher-tier plans you don’t need

A 20-minute cleanup can permanently lower monthly burn.

Impulse spending

Instead of “don’t buy stuff,” use friction:

48-hour rule for purchases over a set amount
Remove saved cards from shopping apps
Keep a running wishlist instead of instant purchases

This cuts emotional purchases without feeling restrictive.

3. Automate the saving immediately

The biggest difference-maker is usually automation.

Try:

Automatic transfer every payday
Separate high-yield savings account
Move the money before you see it

Even:

$75/week = ~$900 in 3 months
$150/week = ~$1,800 in 3 months

Small consistent transfers beat occasional big efforts.

4. Create one “low-spend default”

Don’t try to optimize every decision.

Examples:

Weeknights = home-cooked meals
One no-spend day per week
Fixed entertainment budget
Only one convenience purchase category at a time

Simple rules reduce decision fatigue.

5. Increase income slightly instead of only cutting

For a short-term savings push, earning a little extra is often easier psychologically than aggressive budgeting.

Ideas:

Sell unused gear/clothes/electronics
Freelance or consulting work
Small weekend project
Negotiate a recurring expense (insurance, internet, phone)

Even an extra few hundred dollars changes momentum fast.

6. Track only one number weekly

Avoid overcomplicated budgeting systems.

Every week, check:

“How much did my savings increase this week?”

That keeps attention on progress rather than guilt.

A realistic “light effort” version

If you want something sustainable and low-stress:

Monthly

Cut 2–3 subscriptions
Reduce dining out modestly
Auto-transfer savings on payday

Weekly

One no-spend day
One meal-prep session
Quick 5-minute money check-in

That alone can often create an extra few hundred dollars/month without dramatic lifestyle changes.

If you want, I can also help you build:

a lean 3-month savings plan,
a category-by-category budget,
or a “minimal pain” version based on your current spending habits.

With Finances connected

@Finances Help me come up with a plan to save a little bit more in the next few months.

I’ll look at recent spending, recurring charges, and cash-flow patterns, then turn that into a practical “save a little more” plan rather than a harsh budget.

Here’s the plan I’d use for the next few months. May is still early, so I’m anchoring this mostly on February–April plus the May-to-date spending.

At a $110K salary, the goal is not to make life feel overly restricted. It’s to create more consistency across normal spending categories so saving happens before the month gets away from you.

Your biggest flexible spending levers recently are:

Area	Feb 1–May 9 spend	What it suggests
Groceries & household	~$2,150	Normal, but worth tightening with a weekly target
Shopping	~$1,250	Good opportunity, especially Target/Amazon/clothing runs
Transportation	~$1,450	Gas, parking, rideshare, and car costs add up
Dining & drinks	~$1,620	Very actionable without cutting it entirely
Subscriptions & bills	~$420	Small, but easy cleanup

Target: save an extra $500–$750/month

I would not start by trying to eliminate every small pleasure. Your biggest wins are dining, shopping, transportation, and grocery pacing.

1. Dining: cap at $450/month

Dining has been one of the easiest places for spending to drift. I’d set a realistic cap of $450/month, which still leaves room for takeout, coffee, and a few meals out.

Expected savings: $150–$250/month.

Use a simple rule: pick 2–3 meals out per week, then default to groceries for the rest.

2. Shopping: cap at $300/month

Shopping is not extreme, but it’s the kind of category that can quietly turn into $500–$700 months through Amazon, Target, clothes, and household extras. I’d set a $300/month cap through August.

Expected savings: $150–$250/month.

Use a simple rule: anything over $75 waits 24 hours before buying.

3. Transportation: set a monthly ceiling

Between gas, parking, car maintenance, and occasional rideshare, transportation can become a bigger budget item than it feels in the moment. I’d set a $400/month transportation target, excluding true emergencies or required repairs.

Expected savings: $100–$200/month.

The rule I’d use: rideshare is for late nights, bad weather, carrying things, or when it saves 25+ minutes. Otherwise default to driving, walking, transit, or planning ahead.

4. Groceries: use a weekly target, not a strict diet

Groceries and household basics are necessary, so I wouldn’t treat this as “bad spending.” But I would set a weekly grocery target of about $125–$150 and try to avoid extra midweek convenience runs.

Expected savings: $100–$150/month.

5. Subscriptions: small cleanup only

The recurring charges are not where the big money is, but they’re still worth checking: streaming, apps, news, fitness, cloud storage, and memberships. Canceling one or two might save $20–$50/month. Useful, but not the main plan.

The monthly savings formula
For June–August:

Lever	Monthly target
Dining cap	+$200
Shopping cap	+$200
Transportation ceiling	+$150
Grocery pacing	+$125
Subscription cleanup	+$30
Total potential	~$705/month

To make it stick, I’d automate $500/month to savings first. Then treat the extra $200–$250 as the stretch goal when dining, shopping, or transportation comes in lighter.

Best version of the plan: auto-save $500/month, cap dining at $450, cap shopping at $300, set a transportation ceiling, and use weekly grocery targets so the plan feels realistic instead of restrictive.

From answers to action, with ecosystem partners like Intuit

The vision for ChatGPT is to go beyond answering questions to help users take action towards improving their financial lives, and we’re working with trusted ecosystem partners like Intuit to do this. For example, a user could go from getting a credit card recommendation to understanding their approval odds and submitting an application, or from asking about tax implications of a stock sale to getting a trusted tax estimate and scheduling a session with a live, local tax expert, powered by Intuit and all inside ChatGPT.

Keeping your information private and secure

Your financial data is sensitive, and we have built this experience to respect your privacy and ensure that you’re in control of your information.

When you connect your accounts, ChatGPT can access your balances, transactions, investments, and liabilities to help visualize your finances or answer your questions. It cannot see full account numbers or make any changes to your accounts.

Your conversations with connected financial accounts follow the same model training settings you choose across ChatGPT. You can change this setting anytime in Settings > Data controls⁠(opens in a new window).

You are always in control of your information:

Disconnecting accounts: You can disconnect your financial accounts at any time in Settings > Apps > Finances, or from the Finances page. Once disconnected, your synced account data will be deleted from OpenAI’s systems within 30 days. Disconnecting an account will not affect financial information in your ChatGPT conversation history, but you can delete individual conversations at any time.
Deleting financial memories: ChatGPT can remember key details you share, like goals, obligations, or context about your money, to make future financial conversations across ChatGPT more relevant and personalized. These are saved as financial memories, a dedicated type of memory used specifically to inform financial conversations. You can view or delete them at any time from the Finances page.
Temporary chats: When you use temporary chats, ChatGPT won’t access your connected financial accounts. Temporary chats will not appear in your history.

To further secure your ChatGPT account, you can enable multi-factor authentication (MFA)⁠(opens in a new window), which adds an extra layer of protection to help prevent unauthorized access.

Designed and evaluated for accuracy and quality

Conversations with connected financial accounts default to GPT‑5.5 Thinking⁠, our latest reasoning model in ChatGPT.

Financial questions are personal, complex, and highly context-dependent. A helpful response needs to account for someone’s income, spending, balances, debts, goals, and timing, while being clear about uncertainty, assumptions, and when more information is needed.

To better understand how well ChatGPT serves people in these moments, we built an internal benchmark that helps us evaluate response quality holistically based on criteria developed with experts. We worked with over 50 finance professionals across leading institutions to evaluate this experience and grade ChatGPT’s performance on challenging personal finance tasks.

GPT‑5.5 Thinking outperforms earlier models on complex personal finance tasks. GPT‑5.5 Pro, available for people on ChatGPT Pro, achieves the best overall performance.

* Personal finance benchmark score across challenging finance tasks. This is a weighted composite of expert-graded response quality and response accuracy; higher is better. GPT‑5.5 Thinking, the default model in Finances, scored 79 out of 100 across the benchmark. GPT‑5.5 Pro scored 82.5 out of 100.

This benchmark gives us a clearer way to measure progress, and we will continue to improve how ChatGPT handles complex personal finance tasks over time.