The Monthly Money Scan
Find the subscriptions you forgot about.
Once a month, Cowork looks across your statements and tells you what's actually happening with your money — the subscriptions still hitting your card from a free trial you started two years ago, the duplicate charges, the categories that quietly grew, the auto-renewals coming up. The scan is the workflow that catches the things that drift if nobody's looking.
How Cowork sees your spending (and what it doesn't see).
Cowork doesn't connect directly to your bank. You download your monthly statements as PDFs from each bank or credit card (every bank lets you do this — usually in the "statements" or "documents" section). You drop those PDFs into your Money Command Center folder. Cowork reads them locally on your computer when you ask.
Your statements live on your computer. Cowork doesn't have access to log in, transfer money, or do anything beyond reading what you put in the folder. Privacy stays on your side.
Drop the statements and run the scan.
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Download last month's statements
From each bank and credit card you use, download the PDF statement covering the previous month. Save them into your Money Command Center folder.
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Run the scan
Inside the Money Command Center Project, send this:
Cowork reads the PDFs, runs the scan, and saves the result. Open the file — it's the list you scan over coffee. The next screen walks through making it recurring.
Make it monthly.
The scan is most valuable as a habit, not a one-off. Set up a scheduled task so Cowork prompts you each month.
The 3rd of the month works for most billing cycles — by then your previous month's statements are available. If your cycles are different (military pay, irregular billing), tell Cowork to pick a different date based on when your statements typically land.
Same awake-and-running caveat.
Scheduled tasks need your computer awake and Claude Desktop open at the scheduled time. If you tend to have your laptop closed on weekday mornings, either pick a different time or use Amphetamine / Caffeine / PowerToys Awake to keep your computer awake through the window.
What to do with what comes back.
The scan is useful in proportion to what you actually do with it. The list isn't the win — the win is what you cancel, investigate, or stop ignoring.
Common moves
- Cancel anything you didn't realize you were paying for. Open the provider's website or app and cancel directly. Cowork can draft cancellation emails if the cancel-by-website doesn't exist (see the next lesson, Bills, Renewals & Subscriptions).
- Investigate anything that looks off. Duplicate charges, an amount that doesn't match what you expected, a merchant name you don't recognize. The scan flags it; you call the bank or look at the original receipt.
- Update your Money Reference. If the scan surfaces a recurring charge you're keeping, add it to Money-Reference.md so Cowork has it for next month and doesn't surface it as new again.
- Note big-month context. If spending jumped because of a real reason (vacation, school year starting, holiday gifts), tell Cowork what's behind it. Next month's scan will treat it as expected context, not a flag.
Optional dashboard block.
To surface the scan on your Family Dashboard so you see it without opening Cowork:
The dashboard block is intentionally short — three items, not a full list — so casual glances stay clean. The full scan stays in the file.
Next: Bills, Renewals & Subscriptions.
The scan tells you what to cancel. The next lesson is the workflow for actually getting it done — drafting cancellation emails when there's no easy cancel button, deciding what to keep vs. drop, and handling auto-renewals before they fire.
Continue to Bills, Renewals & Subscriptions →