AI can help you understand financial information, untangle terminology and think of questions you might want to ask.
But that is not the same thing as personal financial advice based on your circumstances.
That distinction matters.
The FCA itself says that general-purpose tools such as ChatGPT can be useful for researching and understanding financial information, but they are not regulated in the same way as financial advice from an authorised professional adviser. It also warns that the information they provide can sometimes be wrong or out of date.
I’m not against using them. Quite the opposite.
If something helps you understand your money better and walk into a financial planning conversation feeling more informed, I think that is useful.
The important bit is knowing what these tools are good at, and where they stop being enough.
Can ChatGPT help with money questions?
Yes.
You might ask it to explain a term you have spotted on a pension statement. You could use it to understand what an ISA is, get your head around pension tax relief or come up with questions to ask before a financial planning meeting.
That can save time.
You may arrive at a meeting already understanding some of the basics, which means we can spend more time talking about the thing that actually matters: you.
Your life. Your plans. Your worries. Your choices.
Because having more information does not automatically tell you what you should do with it.
What if the question you are asking isn’t the real question?
This is something I see a lot. Someone might come to me asking: “Should I put more into my pension?”
Perfectly reasonable question.
But after we start talking, I might discover that she has very little accessible cash and is worried about redundancy.
Another woman might ask: “Can I afford to give my daughter £50,000 towards a house deposit?”
Again, reasonable.
But the important conversation may actually be about how much she can give away without compromising her own financial independence later.
Or perhaps someone wants to know whether she should invest a large amount of cash.
On paper, that sounds like an investment question.
In reality, she may be frightened of getting it wrong. Perhaps she has never invested before. Perhaps she has spent years being the financially cautious one in the family. Perhaps that cash is giving her a sense of security that a spreadsheet cannot measure.
The numbers matter. But so does understanding what sits behind them.
Sometimes one of the most useful things I can say is: “I’m not sure that is the question we need to answer first.”
Why are financial decisions about more than the numbers?
Most meaningful financial decisions involve a trade-off.
- Should you help your children now or keep more for your own future?
- Should you put more into a pension or keep money accessible because you are considering a career break?
- Could you afford to work less if caring responsibilities increase?
- Would paying off more of the mortgage make you feel more secure, even if another option might look different on paper?
- How much is enough before you allow yourself to stop working?
These are not simply maths questions.
Two women could have almost identical finances and make completely different decisions because their families, careers, relationships, priorities and appetite for uncertainty are different.
Neither has necessarily got it wrong.
Good financial planning is not about forcing everybody towards the same answer.
It is about understanding your options properly and deciding what makes sense for the life you actually want.
Can AI replace a financial adviser?
For somebody who has always preferred managing everything herself, AI can make research and financial education much easier.
That is a good thing.
But if what you want is personal financial advice, the difference is important.
A general-purpose tool does not know you in the way someone who has worked with you over time does.
It does not know that the reason you keep so much cash is because you watched your parents lose financial security.
It does not know that you are quietly considering leaving a job you no longer enjoy.
It does not know that helping your children matters enormously to you, but that becoming financially dependent on them later would be your worst nightmare.
And it does not automatically know which of the information you give it is financially important and which piece you have forgotten to mention altogether.
A good adviser should be doing more than supplying information.
My job is to ask questions, join things together and sometimes challenge the thing you thought you had already decided.
It is also to be accountable for the advice I give you. That is very different from simply producing an answer.
What happens when markets fall?
This is where the distinction between knowing something and actually living through it becomes particularly obvious.
You can understand perfectly well that investment markets move up and down.
That feels quite different when it is your own money that has fallen in value.
At that point, you may find yourself wanting to change course simply because doing something feels better than doing nothing.
This is where a plan matters.
Someone who knows your circumstances can come back to the reasons behind the decisions you made and ask a very important question:
Has something changed in your life, or has the market simply made you feel differently about the decision?
Those are not the same thing.
Sometimes the right response will be to reconsider the plan.
Sometimes it will not.
But it is worth knowing which situation you are actually dealing with before you act.
How should you use AI for money questions?
I think it can be very useful when you treat it as a starting point rather than the final word.
You can use it to explain unfamiliar language, help you work out which questions you want to ask, summarise something complicated or show you areas you may want to research further. If it gives you financial facts, check them against the original and current source. The FCA makes the same point in its guidance on using AI for investment research. FCA
And if you have used ChatGPT or another tool before one of our meetings, bring the conversation with you.
I genuinely think that can be useful.
Show me what you asked. Show me the answer it gave you. Tell me which bit made sense and which bit left you with another question. That gives us somewhere interesting to start.
So, can AI help you make better financial decisions?
It can certainly help you become better informed.
And I am very much in favour of women having access to more information, not less.
But information is only part of financial planning.
The harder questions are often much more personal.
- What are you trying to make possible?
- What matters enough to spend money on?
- What do you need to protect?
- What are you frightened of getting wrong?
- What are you putting off?
- And what would financial independence actually look like for you?
Those are the conversations I find most valuable.
So use the technology. Ask questions. Learn. Turn up better informed.
Just remember that finding an answer and finding your answer are not always the same thing.