AI is powerful enough to analyze your finances in seconds and find things you\u2019d probably miss<\/p>\n
It can also end up with enough information to know every aspect of your financial life.<\/p>\n
So, how do you get the benefits without giving away more than you\u2019re comfortable with?<\/p>\n
\u2757The best way to use AI with your money when you\u2019re concerned about privacy is to not use AI with your money.<\/strong> (there are a lot of great tools available<\/a>)<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the second best way, or at least how I do it.<\/p>\n Please tell me if you see any holes or mistakes!<\/strong> <\/p>\n This is a work in progress, I\u2019m learning as I go with this too, thank you!<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say I stick all my statements into ChatGPT, what am I afraid will happen?<\/p>\n All legitimate concerns and, let\u2019s be honest, we can never be sure but here\u2019s what we can do to protect ourselves.<\/p>\n This is the ultimate privacy protection because a local LLM operates on your hardware and your data never leaves. This is, however, also out of my area of expertise. I\u2019ve read about it and even had ChatGPT educate me on it but it requires hardware capability that I don\u2019t have or wish to buy.<\/p>\n But if you did have the hardware and the inclination, you can build one and ChatGPT can teach you.<\/p>\n Temporary chats are like incognito mode for your browser, nothing gets saved to your history. In the case of ChatGPT, it won\u2019t remember them and it won\u2019t be used to train models. They will get saved for up to 30 days for \u201csafety and abuse monitoring.\u201d<\/p>\n \ud83d\udea8 For a period of time in 2025, Open AI kept deleted and temporary chats<\/a> from mid-May to September due to a court order because of a NYT copyright lawsuit. They\u2019ve since been deleted and temporary chats follow their published policy but know that a court order can force preservation.<\/p>\n Other models follow roughly the same rules for their version of incognito chats.<\/p>\n If you don\u2019t use temporary chats, your documents may not include your personal information but ChatGPT will associate them with you. Unless you turn off memory, it\u2019ll know your spending and likely reference it later since it adds to context. I\u2019m not sure if this bothers me yet.<\/p>\n NOTE:<\/strong> If you use temporary chat and want to make it permanent, there\u2019s no mechanism for doing that. You have to copy and paste the whole chat into a regular one.<\/p>\n Depending on how private you wish to be, be careful with the questions you ask. <\/p>\n If you ask \u201cShould I pay off my debt on my Chase Sapphire Reserve card?\u201d then you\u2019ve just told the model that you have a Chase Sapphire Reserve card. You may not care about this level of privacy but it\u2019s something worth noting.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to reveal your salary, employer, home value, kids ages and names, and other information through your questions. Just be careful to share only what you want the model to know.<\/p>\n You can turn off training so your data isn\u2019t used to improve any models.<\/p>\n In ChatGPT, it\u2019s under Settings -> Data controls -> Improve the model for everyone:<\/p>\n In Claude, it\u2019s under Settings -> Privacy ->Help improve our AI models:<\/p>\n For Google Gemini, click on the Settings (gear icon) and then go to Activity (or click here<\/a>) to turn it off. You can also set it to Auto-delete activity older than 3 months, 18 months, 36 months, or never. Unfortunately, to have it remember your other chats, you also have to opt into training.<\/p>\n As it turns out, Gemini Notebook doesn\u2019t use anything you upload to train unless you explicitly share it:<\/p>\n Your data is protected, and is not used to train Gemini Notebook unless you provide feedback.\u00a0 When you share feedback to help us improve, we may review the full context of that interaction, including your queries, uploads, and the model\u2019s responses.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n For credit cards and bank accounts, where your transactions tell the story, you can often just download a list of transactions. Often without any of your personal information.<\/p>\n For example, with a Chase credit card, simply navigate to your card\u2019s list of transactions and you can download them:<\/p>\n You can download practically any time period you can imagine, including All transactions:<\/p>\n Then you get an Excel spreadsheet with no personally identifying information. It is your information but lacks personal information inside the document.<\/p>\n Do not blindly upload this to ChatGPT!<\/strong> Double check there is no personal information.<\/p>\n When I downloaded the transactions for my Citi Costco Card, it did contain a column with our names. This was probably because we had two cardmembers but that\u2019s easy to delete before you upload.<\/p>\n If it is possible to build your portfolio through a download of transactions at your broker, wonderful. Do that too. Some brokers don\u2019t offer a clean easy way to download your balances without including your information.<\/p>\n There are some accounts, like your brokerage, where downloading transactions doesn\u2019t help unless you can download all transactions ever to an account.<\/p>\n In these cases, you could try downloading a file that would normally be imported into Quicken. Many brokers (and banks and credit cards) offer this because of how popular Quicken was. In many cases, it does not include your name or address but it will include account numbers.<\/p>\n When I downloaded my transaction history, two pieces of identifying information were included:<\/p>\n And there is a third field, Once you delete or replace all three values (or more, depending on the # of accounts you have), it\u2019ll be scrubbed and your favorite LLM can analyze it. (for account numbers, I\u2019d replace them with a unique number so it can separate account information)<\/p>\n If your brokerage doesn\u2019t offer any other way to get out your information, you\u2019ll have to scrub it yourself.<\/p>\n Personally, getting a statement and blacking out certain parts is cumbersome. And if you go to edit a PDF and put a black box over it, in some cases you actually still reveal that data because the editor is just visually putting a black box over it\u2026 AI models may still be able to read what\u2019s underneath.<\/p>\n Also, some documents have metadata like your name, company, or the document\u2019s creator. Make sure you remove those as well.<\/p>\n Instead, just take carefully cropped screen captures. Load up your accounts, take screen captures of your balance and holdings, and upload those instead. Crop it in a way that does not reveal any account numbers and you\u2019re good to go. Any LLM will be able to read the information from the images.<\/p>\n Just as a precaution, don\u2019t ever upload these:<\/p>\n The fun part about playing with LLMs is that you can ask it plain English questions. <\/p>\n I uploaded all of our scrubbed credit card transactions (all 2025, and year-to-date on 2026) and asked it to break down our spending, compare spending trends, and give us any advice on places we could save.<\/p>\n Remember that models can hallucinate.<\/strong> They can be wrong. They can be trained on the wrong information. They can find patterns but don\u2019t just blindly trust whatever advice they give you. Assume it can be wrong and get confirmation separately.<\/p>\n This insight was useful:<\/strong> \u201cYour spending isn\u2019t characterized by lots of small leaks\u2014it\u2019s driven by a handful of intentional, high-cost priorities: family, travel, childcare, and experiences. That means meaningful savings are most likely to come from planning and capping those big categories rather than obsessing over small daily purchases.\u201d<\/p>\n In other words, don\u2019t sweat the small stuff and buy that morning latte (which I don\u2019t because I work from home!). Plus we have a nice coffeemaker because I believe in Upgrade and Save Strategy<\/a>.<\/p>\n It also surfaced that we spend a lot on travel.<\/strong> You can ask it to try to guess your trips\u2026 and it\u2019ll do a pretty good job. It was able to identify all the trips we made and tell us how much each cost. There are hiccups, like anything prepaid was separated out as its own trip (like flights), but that\u2019s because I didn\u2019t have any history. The more you talk, the more it\u2019ll remember and I can tell it that the flight I purchased in February was actually for my trip in June.<\/p>\n Finally, I sent it my investment portfolio and asked it to analyze it given I was married, mid-40s, four kids, and what it thought. I recognize I gave it very little, an incomplete picture of my finances, but I wanted to see what ChatGPT would say.<\/p>\n And it gave me a good picture of my investments (and my thoughts):<\/p>\n Here is something that it did surface:<\/p>\n LUV is one holding I\u2019d question.<\/p>\n At nearly $119k<\/strong>, it isn\u2019t huge relative to your total portfolio, but it\u2019s also not a company I\u2019d consider to have the same competitive advantages as Berkshire or Costco. If you wouldn\u2019t buy it today at its current weight, it\u2019s worth asking why you still own it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I acquired those shares in 2009 and 2010 and am sitting on nearly $100,000 in long term capital gains. That\u2019s quite a bit in a single company, especially in such a volatile industry as airlines.<\/p>\n But before you get too excited\u2026<\/strong> it\u2019s works out to be an annual rate of return of 12%, which lags <\/strong>the S&P 500 which returned 14.4-14.9% over that same period (VFAIX, dividends reinvested). By owning LUV, I lost $31,000-$38,000. Ouch.<\/em><\/p>\n The natural comparison is: Are you better off using an LLM yourself or just paying for an app that uses AI<\/a> to help you save money and invest better?<\/p>\n By doing it yourself, you have better control over your data.<\/strong> Many apps will use Plaid to connect to your accounts, which is a read only connection but introduces more parties to your data. You are limited only by your imagination and how thorough you are in your thinking.<\/p>\n OpenAI recently released ChatGPT Finance<\/a>. This mimics a lot of what apps offer and connects using Plaid, the same technology that many apps use. I have not yet tried it but it\u2019s included with ChatGPT Plus ($20\/month). If you\u2019re paying for ChatGPT Plus and are comfortable with Plaid, I\u2019d try this before paying an app separately to see what it offers.<\/p>\n By using an app, you get immediate insight based on the app\u2019s specialty.<\/strong> If it\u2019s budgeting, they will have nice charts and good insights to pass along. If you use a tool that lets you ask questions, say a Boldin\u2019s assistant planner<\/a>, you can start with a good base and still have the casual conversations.<\/p>\nTable of Contents<\/summary>\n
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What Are We Afraid Of?<\/h2>\n
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How To Limit Data Being Saved<\/h2>\n
Build a Local LLM<\/h3>\n
Use Temporary Chats<\/h3>\n
Be Careful With Questions<\/h3>\n
Turn Off Training<\/h3>\n
ChatGPT<\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wallethacks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/chatgpt-improve-models.jpg\"\/)
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wallethacks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/chatgpt-improve-models.jpg\")
<\/figure>\nClaude<\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wallethacks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/claude-help-improve-models-800x395.jpg\"\/)
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wallethacks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/claude-help-improve-models-800x395.jpg\")
<\/figure>\nGoogle Gemini<\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wallethacks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/google-gemini.jpg\"\/)
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wallethacks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/google-gemini.jpg\")
<\/figure>\nGemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM)<\/h4>\n
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How to Sanitize Your Statements & Data<\/h2>\n
Download Transactions Only (Credit Cards, Bank)<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wallethacks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/chase-download-statement-800x88.jpg\"\/)
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wallethacks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/chase-download-statement-800x88.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wallethacks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/chase-download-statements.jpg\"\/)
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wallethacks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/chase-download-statements.jpg\")
<\/figure>\nDownload Quicken File (Brokers)<\/h3>\n
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Manually Scrub Personal Information<\/h3>\n
Don\u2019t Upload These<\/h3>\n
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Is It Worth The Hassle?<\/h2>\n
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Is This Better Than Apps?<\/h2>\n