AI Guides › Workbench
By Nigel Guy · 7 min read
Most people who decide to "get on top of their money" download a budgeting app, connect a bank, admire the colourful categories for a week and then stop looking. The app was busy, so it felt like progress. What it never did was force you to say, in one place, what comes in, what goes out, and what is left once the irregular bills are counted. That last part is where most budgets quietly fail.
The rule: a finance dashboard is only useful if you can change one number and watch the gap move. If it can't recalculate in front of you, it's a report, not a tool.
This kit gives you three free ways to get that live recalculation, from "ten minutes, no setup" to "built exactly to your household". None of them needs your bank login.
| Tool | What it does | Cost at time of writing | Best for | The catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MoneyHelper Budget Planner | Walks you through income and spending, totals them, and points to where you could save | Free, from the government-backed Money and Pensions Service | A first honest picture in one sitting | Fixed structure; you can't add your own charts or "what if" sliders |
| Google Sheets budget template | A spreadsheet with formulas already wired up; edit a cell and totals update | Free with a Google account | Month-by-month tracking you keep updating | Templates vary and change; you still type or paste every figure |
| A Claude artifact you build | An interactive page Claude writes for you, with sliders and charts that recalculate as you type | Free plan includes artifacts at time of writing | "What if" questions: a pay rise, a new mortgage rate, cutting one subscription | You have to check the maths it writes; on the free plan the page doesn't store what you type |
MoneyHelper is run by the Money and Pensions Service and describes its planner as free and confidential. Before you open it, gather payslips (or invoices if you're self-employed), three months of bank statements and your regular bills. The planner adds up income and spending and then suggests what to look at next: saving if you have money left over, cutting costs if things are tight, and guides if you're overspending.
How to use it well:
Google's own help says you can open the Template gallery from the top right of the Sheets home screen, or go to File > New > From a template from inside a spreadsheet. Look for a budget template in the gallery. Names and layouts change, so pick whichever one has an income table, an expenses table and a summary cell. You don't need more than that.
How to use it well:
Artifacts are the interactive pages Claude can build in a conversation. At time of writing, Anthropic's help centre says they're available on the Free plan, and that they need Cloud code execution and file creation turned on under Settings > Capabilities. Artifacts start private to you. Saving data inside an artifact is limited to paid plans, so on Free you should treat the page as a calculator you refill each time, not a vault.
Use this prompt. Replace the bracketed parts with your own round figures. Don't paste statements, account numbers or anything that identifies you.
You are helping me build a personal finance dashboard as an interactive artifact. I live in the UK and work in pounds sterling.
Goal: a single page where I can adjust my numbers and immediately see where my money goes and what is left each month.
My figures (monthly unless stated):
- Take-home income: [MONTHLY_TAKE_HOME_£]
- Fixed bills (name and amount each): [FIXED_BILLS_LIST]
- Flexible spending categories (name and typical amount each): [FLEXIBLE_CATEGORIES_LIST]
- Yearly or irregular costs (name and yearly amount each): [ANNUAL_COSTS_LIST]
- Savings or debt-repayment target per month: [MONTHLY_TARGET_£]
Build it in this order:
1. An input panel with a field or slider for every figure above, prefilled with my numbers.
2. A summary strip showing total income, total spending (with annual costs divided by 12), the monthly target, and the amount left over or short.
3. One chart showing spending by category as a share of income.
4. A "what if" section where I can change any one figure and see the leftover amount before and after, side by side.
Rules:
- Every total must recalculate the moment I change an input.
- Show the formula for the leftover figure in plain words under the summary.
- Do not invent categories, figures, interest rates or advice I haven't given you.
- Keep it to one page that works on a phone.
If any of my figures are missing or unclear, ask me for them before you build anything. Do not fill gaps with typical UK averages.
Before you finish, check that income minus all spending minus the target equals the leftover figure using my starting numbers, and tell me the result of that check.
Fill in: your take-home pay, bills, flexible categories, yearly costs and monthly target, as rounded figures.
When the page appears, run your own test. Set one category to zero and check the leftover goes up by exactly that amount. Then compare the starting leftover with your MoneyHelper baseline. If the two disagree by more than rounding, find out why before you trust either.
| You want to see | Use |
|---|---|
| Whether you're in surplus or shortfall at all | MoneyHelper |
| How this month compares with last month | Google Sheets, one tab per month |
| What happens if your rent rises or a subscription goes | Claude artifact |
| Which category is quietly the biggest | Any of them, but the artifact's chart makes it hardest to ignore |
The trap is believing the dashboard. Every one of these tools does arithmetic on whatever you give it. If you forget the annual car insurance, the dashboard will cheerfully show a surplus you don't have. A live chart makes wrong numbers look more convincing, not less. The fix is boring: take your figures from statements, include the yearly costs, and check one total by hand.