The AI Subscription Audit Prompt
The average American pays about $219/month for subscriptions — and guesses $86 (C+R Research, 2022). The gap isn't carelessness; it's that nobody reads their own statements. An AI will, in minutes.
Our own run: 23 charges flagged, 16 confirmed, $99.94/month killed in one evening. Redirected at 7% for 30 years, that single evening is worth roughly $122,000.
Step 1 — Export safely
Export 12 months of transactions as CSV from every card, and delete the account-number column — the AI only needs date, merchant, and amount. Twelve months matters: annual renewals are where the expensive stuff hides.
Step 2 — The audit prompt
PROMPT 1 · THE AUDIT
You are auditing my transactions for recurring charges. Work only from the data provided. 1) Identify every recurring charge — monthly, annual, and irregular-interval ones (watch for same-merchant charges ~12 months apart; annual is where the expensive stuff hides). 2) Group by category and flag duplicates serving the same purpose. 3) For each: merchant, amount, interval, annualized cost, last-used evidence if inferable, and rank by cancellation ease. 4) Output three tables — KILL (duplicates, zombies, nothing used in 90 days), DOWNGRADE, KEEP — with monthly totals per table and the combined annualized recovery. 5) Put cryptic merchant names in a separate NEEDS-A-HUMAN table instead of guessing. Rules: do not invent charges; if an interval is uncertain, say so. I decide — you propose.
Step 3 — The exit scripts
PROMPT 2 · THE EXIT SCRIPTS
For each service on my KILL list, write: (a) the shortest chat message that cancels without engaging the retention offer, (b) a cancellation email for services requiring "contact support", and (c) for every KEEP with an annual renewal, a calendar reminder title + date set 2 days before renewal. Plain text, no pleading — cancellation is not a negotiation.
Privacy option: run the same prompt on a local model (Ollama / LM Studio) — slower, dumber, private.
Where it breaks — honestly
- Merchant names are garbage; expect a NEEDS-A-HUMAN table.
- Shared subscriptions cause dinner negotiations. The AI can't help you there.
- The AI proposes. You decide. Always.
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Watch the full click-by-click runI Made AI Audit My Subscriptions. It Found $99.94/Month. (5:25)