Most days feel like a sprint — work, family, errands, repeat. I use AI constantly, from planning trips to organizing meals, but I’d never tried giving it a budget and asking it to improve my life. So, I did exactly that. I gave ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini a challenge with a single prompt: “You get $50 total. Improve my life within the next 24 hours. Go.”
I used ChatGPT-5.1, Claude 4.5 Sonnet and Gemini 2.5 Pro. They each got the same prompt, the same rules and the same budget. The comparison proved to be fascinating because all three assistants provided excellent, well-structured responses, but they have fundamentally different philosophies. The results from each were surprisingly human, but only one gave me improvements I would actually use.
How I tested the AIs
I judged each chatbot on

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