Ask HN: Are there any money-saving hacks that AI can assist you with？
AI Agents are becoming increasingly powerful – they can search online, make phone calls, and engage in ongoing communication with humans to solve complex problems.
So, think about this: are there things you know could save you money, but you don't do them simply because your time is too valuable and it doesn't feel worth the effort?
Perhaps these are the perfect tasks to delegate to AI Agents.
Let's discuss!
21 comments
[ 5.5 ms ] story [ 52.7 ms ] threadI actually built an AI Agent where I provide it with my bills and personal information.
It automatically makes the phone calls to negotiate with customer service reps on my behalf, helping me lower my fees or cancel subscriptions.
It has saved me a significant amount of time.
E.g. I use it for stuff like "find me the best air cleaner available in Europe", or "List all WCS events in Europe in upcoming 2 months", or "find me a class doing xx in city xx that has the best teacher", "find me a presence sensor for home automation that does xxx".
I usually only care about quality - and it's amazing in finding good stuff. I bet if I asked it to optimize for price, it would save me a lot of money finding good value items.
Similarly with other optimisation tasks - e.g. "I like to eat here and here, and do this and this. Find solutions that are just as good, but way cheaper".
I mention Deep Research from OpenAI (not from Google, and not just chatGPT with search), because that's the only model I found that does a good enough job for me - I'd say comparable to me spending a day on researching.
Another factor is that having the menus come from an outside source keeps them 'honest', I wouldn't 100% trust myself not to include some of the crap I was precisely trying to get rid of If I made them from scratch
The result was surprisingly good... maybe not 100% right, more like 90%, but good enough to overcome that friction.
This is the question that should be asked without all the "AI" buzz. If you use ML for your solution then use ML for your solution, I don't care. (What I don't want is to talk to a robot while using it)
Living in the Himalayan region, I often struggled to find relevant diet recommendations—Google mostly suggests European or American dishes with ingredients that aren’t easily available here. So, I took a different approach. I asked AI to design a diet for me that was not only nutritionally balanced but also cost-effective. I added constraints like avoiding pesticides, minimizing the risk of adulteration, and focusing on seasonal foods.
The result? I slashed my food expenses from a staggering $800 per month to just $200. More importantly, after eight months on this diet, my health markers remain perfect—no deficiencies, no issues. I feel great, and it’s the most sustainable way of eating I’ve ever followed.
But wait you can do it manually too right? Yes, but you need to sit with pen and paper and workout what each type of food contains, then balance and all that mind numbing stuff (and worst part is that you cannot quickly change and adjust for it in later meals which AI can)