Finding good financial advice can be stressful – and expensive. That’s one reason why chatbots have become an increasingly popular and free alternative.
But using artificial intelligence to answer your pressing money questions also carries hidden dangers. I’m a finance professor who has been closely watching the spread of AI into personal finance, and I recently warned that AI is riskiest when it sounds most confident. I advised readers to bring in a human professional for high-stakes financial decisions.
One response came back that caught my attention: What if you can’t afford an adviser?
For many households, that’s the reality. A traditional adviser can cost hundreds of dollars an hour, which makes little sense when your savings are modest. For those people, AI isn’t a second opinion but the only financial adviser they’ll ever have. So the useful question isn’t whether they should use it; it’s how to get something actually helpful out of it without being misled.
My answer: For people who can’t afford ongoing advice, AI is genuinely useful for budgeting, paying down debt and low-cost investing.
