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Money

Refunds, bills, deals and money you were owed · 465 ideas
MoneyWent wrong

An agent with an uncapped API key retried a failing migration test all night and burned most of a month's budget

Last spring he gave an agent an API key with no cap on it. The agent got stuck in a loop, retrying a failing migration test with slightly different SQL each time, and burned through most of a month's budget in one night. Nothing malicious, just a loop with no exit. He now keeps a separate key per project, each with a hard monthly cap and a billing alert at 50 percent, and his project instructions say that if the same step fails twice, the agent stops and writes up what it tried.

This one went wrong. See what happened before you try it.
MoneyPartly worked

Trade Polymarket for a week with no intervention from me

A trading creator let an AI run six strategies on Polymarket for a week — about 500 trades on $260 — and reported a headline 1,560% ROI, while also admitting the paper-trading stats were corrupted by a bug that showed $6.2 million in profit from $30 by ignoring fees and slippage. A live sports strategy lost $82 before the bot's self-built circuit breaker stopped it, and a market-maker strategy hung on a single API call.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

My agent runs my 20 credit card and bill system with two dashboards

With about 20 credit cards, she could never keep track of what each one earns. The AI built her two dashboards. The finance one shows every card with her own nicknames for them, all her bills with due dates, one tap mark paid buttons, live checking balances through Plaid, and her credit score tracked monthly. The spending one logs purchases she texts in, like a shop name and amount on a named card, sorts them into categories, and tells her if she picked the right card, since it knows her rewards, like 6% on groceries on one card and 5% on gas on another. It also sends a Sunday morning roundup of the week's bills, reminds her which card to use before she shops, and warns her about quarterly reward caps.

My agent watches my golf club statement and caught 140 dollars of other people's charges

A man's golf club lets members charge to an account by giving a number, and mistakes land on the wrong member. The AI built him a watcher that opens his club statement every morning at 8:20, spots new charges by their ticket numbers, and texts him each receipt with the running balance. In two months it caught a 25 dollar and a 115 dollar charge from other members that he would never have spotted.

$140

Catch a $244 duplicate hotel charge and draft the dispute email

Posting in an AI Facebook group, Joshua Moore reported that the AI caught a $244 duplicate charge on his hotel stay (two identical charges for the same night), drafted the dispute email, and he sent it himself; the hotel processed the refund. His words: "$244 back in my pocket."

$244one time
MoneyPartly worked

Negotiate with AT&T support chat to restore my lost discount

J.t. Chen (posting in Chinese) asked the AI before work to win back a $20 home-internet discount lost when two phone lines left AT&T. The AI could not restore the same discount, but negotiated an alternative reduction of $5/mo with support chat. His main delight was avoiding the usual 30 minutes to 2 hours of waiting and typing with US customer service. In comments he clarified the AI works over web text chat, not phone calls.

$5
This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

Researched a used Canon T3i camera bundle's resale value (eBay comps $220-$225)

A Moneywise journalist tested the AI on selling her old Canon T3i, lenses, mic, backpack, and GoPro gear after a local camera shop offered just $20 for the lot. The AI found exact-match eBay sold comps ($220-$225), located a Foto Care cash-buy event in NYC, and wrote a negotiation brief with opening, target, and walk-away prices to counter lowball offers.

$220
MoneyPartly worked

Find and file class-action settlements automatically

Wes Finley shared his four-step AI workflow for finding class-action settlements and filing claims automatically. Commenters chimed in with their own results, including $400 payouts.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

Negotiated with a local artisan for a ceramic piece

New York Times journalist Eli Tan (who nicknamed his AI 'Wren') asked the AI to sort his emails, assemble his fantasy football team, and 'fiercely negotiate for a ceramic piece with a local artisan.' He called it 'the most useful app [he's] ever used.'

MoneyPartly worked

Hunt my lost 401(k) through twenty years of mergers with AI

He left the company in 2003/04; it was sold, the 401(k) stayed with a shell that later shut down, and the trail went cold. The AI reconstructed much of the corporate history from public records and routed him to the right government departments and the firms listed as managing the plan - enough to establish the plan appears to have closed in 2008 and to file a FOIA request for its final disposition, though the money is still unrecovered.

This only partly worked. Worth knowing before you try it.

Find the illegal rent increases hidden in my lease and emails

After a $400 rent hike, a tenant fed the AI his full lease plus three years of landlord emails; overnight it matched open repair requests to a clause barring increases while repairs are open, totalled $6,200 overcharged across 18 billing cycles, and drafted a demand letter. He later used it to coordinate 14 other units, and the landlord’s lawyer reportedly confirmed the numbers, with $91,400 at stake building-wide.

$6,200one time
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Every idea is a real post from someone who tried it, summarized in our words, with a link to the original. App names are swapped for plain words.