AI as Your Financial Partner: How to Prompt Your Way to a Better Budget

Are you getting ready to graduate? Here is a suggested prompt to help you with your new life! We are regular users of AI in the classroom. We follow the Pedagogical Mirror educational approach. We help students create a "2-for-1" brain to wow employers and prepare for launch!

But before we get to the prompt, here are some ideas and resources:

Mindset:

The best way to think of budgeting is as prefabricating a set of expense tradeoffs.  Mechanically making the budget is not particularly difficult.  There are lots of resources, or you can build it yourself in Excel.  We suggest the budgeting tools from Clever Girl Finance.

The true challenges are:

a) making those tradeoffs and then

b) sticking to them.  

Admitting to yourself that you do not have as much money as you want is a psychological challenge, not so much a math problem.  Calculating a budget helps you overcome the psychological barriers and boosts your chances of sticking to it.

Take solace in knowing even Elon Musk has tradeoffs. He has to decide whether to send a spacecraft to Mars OR Venus; he cannot do both. Everyone has challenging tradeoffs; the difference is a matter of degree.

Resources:

1. Program:  Here is our monthly program curriculum.  https://www.financerevamp.com/program  If you follow a VidCast link, it will take you to our YouTube channel. Or use this link: https://www.youtube.com/@jeffhulett  I encourage you to subscribe.  For budgeting video content, check out our playlist called “Plan for Prosperity.”

2. Book and Tech:  You can pick up my book, Making Choices, Making Money, and check out the budgeting chapter.  https://www.financerevamp.com/book.  The book also provides access to our classroom Personal Finance Decision technology.  The same tech we use in our college class.  It is also full of tested GenAI prompts for curating Personal Finance information. 

3. Wealth Strategy:  The savings waterfall (SWF) and Investment Barbell Strategy (IBS).  The book describes 2 methods you will find helpful.  The SWF transforms your work income into savings.  The IBS transforms your savings into long-term wealth.

4. Personal Reinforcement: Sign up for our weekly newsletter. This is the same newsletter sent to our class graduates.  It provides market conditions, reminders, tips, and tricks to help reinforce the path to financial success!  https://www.thecuriosityvine.com/post/join-our-best-decision-newsletter

5. Budget Prompt:  For testing your budget categories, here is my tested GenAI prompt:

I am graduating from (School) and moving to (City/State). My gross salary will be (Amount) and it (does/does not) include benefits.  I (do /do not) have a student loan debt.  If I do, this is my estimated loan payment, calculated with the Federal Student Aid Loan simulator ($amount).

Please provide:

a)      A list of the top 10 budget categories I need, including estimated monthly costs based on the cost of living in my new city.

b)      An estimate of my take-home pay after standard taxes.

c)       A breakdown of the 50/30/20 rule (Needs, Wants, Savings) tailored to my specific income.

d)      Mention 2-3 'hidden' expenses specific to moving or starting a first job that I might be overlooking.

We are regular users of AI in the classroom. We follow the Pedagogical Mirror approach. We seek to help students create a "2-for-1" brain to prepare for launch!