Quick question: how much did you spend on takeout last month?
(If your answer is "I'd rather not know," this email is for you. Sorry.)
Gemini can now help you find out.
Google Wallet just became a connected app in Gemini. Link your bank account to Wallet, and Gemini can read your transactions and answer questions about where the money went.
(Your bank, chatting with your AI. Yes, there's a privacy section. Read it.)
It can't spend a cent. Google's words: it can't "make transactions" or change your accounts.
It's free for US users 18 and up, on personal Google accounts, in English. It's rolling out gradually, so you might not see it yet.
A few minutes to set up, then a five-minute check-in once a month. Plus three privacy moves I'd make first.
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Right. Back to it.
What you can ask it
Google's own examples:
"How much did I spend on groceries last month?"
"Find the boarding pass for my flight to Chicago."
"Show me my airline loyalty numbers."
It can also summarize your spending, give budgeting tips, and check the rewards and offers on your cards.
One honest warning from Google itself: Gemini "might not always get it right." Google also says not to rely on it for financial advice.
Set it up
Link your bank in Wallet. Go to wallet.google.com, open Settings, click "Accounts linked with Plaid," then "Link an account." New transactions can take a few minutes to show up.
Connect Wallet to Gemini. In the Gemini app on Android, tap your profile picture, then Personal Intelligence, then Connected Apps. On the web it's Settings & help, then Personal Intelligence, then Connected Apps.
One requirement: a setting called Keep Activity has to be on. Wallet won't connect without it.
The privacy trade (read this bit)
Keep Activity is the setting that lets Google keep your Gemini chats.
Google says it doesn't train its AI "directly" on your Wallet data. It does use summaries and excerpts of that data, plus what it can infer from it.
Some chats also get read by human reviewers, and reviewed chats can be kept for up to three years.
Android Authority's reviewer said this access "crosses a line I'm not quite comfortable with." That's a fair reaction.
My take: it's worth it for a monthly check-in, as long as you do three things.
Change auto-delete in Gemini Apps Activity from 18 months to 3.
Delete your money chats when you're done with them.
If you disconnect Wallet later, delete the old money chats too. Gemini can still use what's in a past chat.
And if all of that feels like too much? Skipping it is a perfectly good answer.
Your monthly money check-in
Once a month, in a fresh chat, paste this:
Using my Google Wallet data, look at my spending from last month.
1. My 5 biggest spending categories, with totals.
2. Anything that looks like a subscription or a recurring charge.
3. How eating out compared with the month before.
4. Any rewards or offers on my cards I'm not using.
5. Three realistic places I could cut [amount] next month.
Keep it short. If any data looks incomplete, tell me.That last line matters. If a total looks suspiciously low, check your linked accounts in Wallet before you trust it.
Make it stick
Put a repeating reminder in your calendar for the 1st of every month: "Money check-in."
Paste the prompt, read the answer, delete the chat.
Five minutes. And no more wondering where September went.
A monthly chore that now takes five minutes, and you still make every call. If you run a business, that's exactly how Run On Claude works.
Every month, Claude takes one job off your plate. Right now that's your social posts and your customer emails, with a new job each month picked by member vote.
You set each job up once with a 20-minute guide. Claude writes the drafts, you read them and hit send.
If it hasn't saved you 5 hours in your first 30 days, you get your first month back.
Business owners only. $147 a month until we hit 50 members.
Talk tomorrow,
Zephyr
P.S. Hit reply and tell me the spending category that surprised you most. No judgment, promise.