AI How-to is a set of hands-on guides for using tools like ChatGPT to summarize filings, analyze property transactions, and track economic indicators. Every step maps to a real prompt and screenshot you can follow.
SSA builds the COLA from three CPI-W months. July 2026 is in at 327.104, which puts the 2027 COLA at 3.1% so far, not the 3.6% in headlines.
Every SAI calculator online still runs last year's tables. Here's the official 2027-28 formula, a ChatGPT prompt for it, and the entry that costs $10,152.
An HSA vs FSA prompt run cold: the AI reframed it as a choice between two health plans, then quoted a 2027 HSA limit $50 above the published one.
A ChatGPT prompt to size your September 15 estimated tax payment on $30,000 of 1099 income. The safe harbor came out to $465, not $7,500.
A ChatGPT prompt to choose Roth or traditional 401(k) in 2026, run on a $92,000 salary. The break-even retirement rate is 19.3%, not 22%.
How to spot a value trap: run the four warning signs against free SEC EDGAR numbers. On one Nasdaq small cap, AI could answer just one of the four.
Ford's P/E reads None, its ROE is -18.2%, its P/B is 1.56. Here is the undervalued-stock screening prompt I ran on a free screener, checked at SEC EDGAR.
A prompt for appealing a denied insurance claim with AI. Only 5% of denials cite medical necessity, and my first run pointed me at the wrong agency.
Paste your renewal notice into ChatGPT and get a counter-offer letter backed by real rent comps. Free prompt, plus what landlords actually accept.
Debt avalanche vs snowball, run by ChatGPT on $29,359 of real inputs: both finish in month 34, snowball costs $402.87 more, and 40% have no real choice.
The USDA number for my exact household is $895 a month. I had ChatGPT sort three months of receipts against it, and the gap was not where I expected.
Three months of statements misses annual renewals. Here is the 13-month audit I ran through Claude, and the seven recurring charges it pulled out.
I ran one 2026 pay stub and my W-4 through Claude. It found a stale dependent credit and a $2,910 shortfall, with eight paychecks left to fix it.
A copy-paste prompt that pulls every overdraft, NSF, ATM and maintenance fee out of 12 months of statements, plus the 3 fees it will never find.
The ChatGPT debt payoff prompt, run on LendingTree's $102,981 scenario. GPT's interest math matched my Python check to the cent, and the gap was $17.76.
I ran a ChatGPT dispute-letter prompt on a credit report with six errors. It cited the right FCRA section, then missed the evidence sitting in the file.
A single copy-paste prompt that reviews your lease clause by clause, plus the eight places AI gets landlord-tenant law wrong and how to check its work.
A prompt to review a medical bill with AI, decoding every code and flagging duplicates. On a test bill with six planted errors it caught five.
U.S. families plan to spend $874.68 on K-12 back-to-school in 2026, per NRF. Audit last year's card statement with AI, then cut what you would only rebuy.
Americans expect to spend $3,940 on a 2026 summer trip, before resort fees and baggage. Build a real budget with AI and reconcile it against what you actually spend.
Air conditioning is about 19% of U.S. home electricity use, and it all lands in the hottest months. Find your rate type, estimate your AC kWh, and let AI turn both into a dollar figure before the bill arrives. Worked example, prompt, and the cases where the estimate breaks.
Mint shut down in March 2024 and a lot of people never replaced it. You do not need a new app: download your card transactions as a CSV from your bank, strip the account numbers, and drop the file into ChatGPT or Claude. Here is the exact prompt that finds forgotten subscriptions and category creep, plus the privacy checklist to run first.
Most 'record high' and 'all-time high' numbers in the news are technically true and still misleading: they skip inflation adjustment, lean on a weak base year, or cherry-pick the time window. Here is a 3-step routine using ChatGPT or Claude plus two free official sources, the BLS inflation calculator and FRED, to tell a real record from an artifact.
Every US public company files its annual report (10-K) on SEC EDGAR for free. Download it, drop it into ChatGPT or Claude, and get the business model, three years of numbers, and the risk factors in about 3 minutes. Here is the exact routine, the copy-paste prompt, and the guardrails that stop the AI from making numbers up.
I screened 9 GitHub repos that promise to replace paid finance apps and kept 4: Firefly III for budgeting, Ghostfolio for portfolio tracking, yfinance for stock data, and OpenBB for research. Star counts and last-commit dates verified on July 13, 2026, plus what each one actually does, how to start, and the catches (hosting, API keys).
The June CPI report drops July 14. Here is how to pull the real numbers and read them with AI in 15 minutes, plus where the AI quietly gets it wrong.