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Guide

25 things to ask your AI agent about your finances

Era Context connects your bank accounts to any AI assistant through the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Once connected, your AI can do more than answer questions about your spending. It can create rules, organise your transactions, set goals, and monitor your accounts — all from a single conversation.

These 25 prompts are organised into five categories. Each one works in Claude, ChatGPT, OpenClaw, or any MCP-compatible client connected to Era Context. Copy, paste, and see what happens.


Spending analysis

1. "Compare my dining spending this month vs last month"

Era Context pulls your dining transactions for both periods and shows you the difference — total spend, number of transactions, and the percentage change. Useful for spotting lifestyle creep before it becomes a habit.

2. "What are my top 5 spending categories this year?"

Your AI ranks your categories by total spend and shows you where your money is actually going. Most people are surprised by at least one category on the list.

3. "Show me every transaction over $200 in the last 60 days"

A quick way to surface large purchases you might have forgotten about. Your AI lists them with merchant names, dates, and amounts across all connected accounts.

4. "What does my spending forecast look like for the rest of this month?"

Era Context analyses your spending patterns and recurring charges to project what you will likely spend between now and month-end. Helpful for deciding whether to hold off on a big purchase.

5. "Which day of the week do I spend the most money?"

Your AI breaks down your spending by day of the week. Friday and Saturday tend to lead, but the specifics vary — and knowing your pattern is the first step to changing it.


Savings and goals

6. "I want to save $5,000 by December — what do I need to set aside monthly?"

Your AI calculates the monthly savings target based on how many months remain. Simple arithmetic, but having it in context with your actual cash flow makes it actionable.

7. "Remember that my emergency fund target is $10,000"

This saves the goal to Era Context's cross-agent memory. Every AI client you use — Claude, ChatGPT, or any other — will know about this target going forward. When you ask about savings progress next month, the context is already there.

8. "What is my average monthly cash flow over the last six months?"

Your AI calculates total income minus total spending for each of the last six months and gives you the average. This is the number that tells you how much room you actually have to save.

9. "Remember that I get paid on the 1st and 15th of each month"

Another cross-agent memory prompt. Once your AI knows your pay schedule, it can give better advice about timing purchases and setting aside savings.

10. "Are there any months in the last year where I spent more than I earned?"

Your AI checks each month's cash flow and flags the ones where outflows exceeded inflows. Knowing which months are tight helps you plan ahead for the next time.


Rules and automation

11. "Create a rule that tags all transactions over $100 as 'big purchase'"

Your AI builds the rule and presents it for your approval. Once active, every future transaction over $100 gets automatically tagged. You can then ask "show me all my big purchases this quarter" and get an instant answer.

12. "Set up a rule to alert me if any subscription increases in price"

Your AI creates a monitoring rule that watches for price changes in your recurring charges. You approve it before it activates, and it runs automatically from that point on.

13. "Create a rule that tags all grocery transactions across all my accounts"

Useful when grocery purchases are spread across multiple cards. The rule identifies grocery merchants and applies a consistent tag regardless of which account you used.

14. "Show me the rules I have active right now"

Your AI lists every active rule with the original plain-English description you used to create it. Each rule carries an audit trail — you can see exactly what you asked for and when.

15. "Create a rule that flags any transaction from a merchant I have never used before"

A practical security and awareness measure. New merchants get flagged so you can confirm they are legitimate. Approve the rule, and it runs quietly in the background.


Housekeeping

16. "Clean up my merchant names — group Uber Eats, UberEats, and UBER EATS together"

Bank feeds are messy. The same merchant appears under different names depending on the card, the terminal, or the phase of the moon. Your AI normalises them so your spending data is actually useful.

17. "Find all recurring charges and list them by amount"

A quick audit of everything you are paying for on a regular basis, sorted from most to least expensive. The total at the bottom is usually the number that gets your attention.

18. "Tag all my coffee shop transactions this year"

Your AI searches for coffee-related merchants across all accounts and tags them. You can then track your coffee spend as its own category — which is either reassuring or alarming.

19. "What categories are my transactions sorted into right now?"

A snapshot of your current category structure. Useful for identifying gaps — transactions that are uncategorised or mis-categorised — before setting up rules to fix them.

20. "Find any duplicate or near-duplicate transactions in the last 30 days"

Sometimes the same charge appears twice due to merchant processing. Your AI scans for transactions with the same amount and similar dates from the same merchant. Worth checking monthly.


Strategic

21. "Which of my credit cards has the lowest utilisation?"

Your AI checks your credit card balances against their limits and tells you which card has the most available headroom. Useful when you are deciding which card to use for a large purchase.

22. "What would happen to my monthly cash flow if I cancelled my three most expensive subscriptions?"

Your AI identifies the three costliest recurring charges, sums them, and shows you the impact on your monthly bottom line. Sometimes the answer is enough to make you pick up the phone and cancel.

23. "Compare my total spending this year versus last year, broken down by quarter"

A high-level view of whether your spending is trending up, down, or staying flat. Your AI pulls the numbers for each quarter and calculates the year-over-year change.

24. "What percentage of my income goes to fixed costs versus discretionary spending?"

Your AI separates recurring charges and essentials from discretionary spending and calculates the split. Financial advisors call this your "fixed cost ratio" — and most people have no idea what theirs is.

25. "Based on my spending patterns, what are three realistic areas where I could cut back?"

Your AI analyses your transaction history and suggests specific categories where your spending is higher than usual or where small changes would have a meaningful impact. Not generic advice — recommendations based on your actual data.


How to get started

These prompts work with any MCP-compatible AI client connected to Era Context. The setup takes less than five minutes:

  1. Sign up at era.app and connect your bank accounts through MX.
  2. Connect your AI client to Era Context at https://context.era.app.
  3. Start asking questions.

The Basic tier is free and supports 2 accounts with read-only access — enough to try any of the analysis prompts above. The Organize tier ($14.99/month) adds the rules engine, full read-write access, and support for up to 15 accounts. The Automate tier ($29.99/month) adds money transfers and rule-triggered automation.

Every interaction is logged in your activity trail. Your data is encrypted with AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.3 in transit. Bank credentials are never stored. Your data is never sold and never used for advertising.

Copy a prompt, paste it into your AI client, and see what your financial data can do when your AI can actually reach it.