I presented ChatGPT with a summary of my monthly budget and asked it to offer any suggestions to improve my finances.
It did offer some helpful tips like cutting down on groceries and rent and setting aside more money for loan repayments and savings, but not anything I couldn’t have gotten from a random blog. In other words, it mostly offered generic advice.
Relying on a chatbot like ChatGPT, Google Bard or one of the many others coming up will probably not help you much when it comes to managing your personal finances.
AI Powered Personal Finance Apps
The best personal finance apps are the ones that have access to your transactions and banking information. They can provide advice that is tailored for you.
That’s why chatbots fail at providing user-specific advice on money management. But what if we integrated AI with personal finance apps?
Popular personal finance apps like Mint have always offered suggestions to help you take control of your spending and save money. But with AI entering the consumer space, we are seeing AI enter more forcefully into the personal finance market.
There are apps like Cleo that are mostly AI. Cleo even has an instant chat where you can ask questions like ‘Can I afford Pizza? Or ‘Where is my money going?’.
There’s also Wallet.AI, an AI engine that offers contextual financial advice.
The Risk of Using AI for Personal FInance
The biggest concern when it comes to using personal finance management apps is that you have to provide access to your bank accounts as well as debit and credit cards.
So you have to be really careful which app you are handing the keys to your life to. A data breach can bring disaster to your finances. You also need to be sure the app is not using your financial data for some nefarious purposes like selling it to third party ad services.
My advice is to be cautious with new and shiny AI powered apps. They may claim to have the power to make you a billionaire, but you are better off with a trusted app that’s been around for some time.
Something else to keep in mind is that even an AI powered app will not perform magic. It does not replace a financial advisor and good money common sense.
It may also not help with what most people need when it comes to their finances - making more money.
That said, there are plenty of benefits to using a personal finance app. Adding AI to the mix may prove to be more helpful by offering better insights into our spending, a chat feature that offers more personalized advice and predictive advice to keep us from doing stupid things like ordering that thousand dollar kegerator when you only drink a couple beers a week.
Other AI Apps
If you are not comfortable giving AI access to your bank accounts, there are plenty of other apps that can still help you save money.
Truebill offers easy subscription management. It tracks your current subscriptions and suggests the ones to cancel to reduce your spending.
There are also AI apps to help you with grocery shopping, travel planning, meal planning, investments and so on.
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