Be honest with me for a second:

Have you ever asked ChatGPT for financial advice?

If you just whispered “yes” in your head, don’t worry. You’re not alone!

I asked my Instagram community recently if they’ve ever used ChatGPT for money advice and the responses ranged from “once or twice” to “literally all the time.”

I get it! Asking AI for financial advice is easy, nearly instant, and (maybe most importantly), it’s judgment free. With AI, there’s never a need to feel awkward about asking basic questions or admitting you don’t know something. ChatGPT won’t raise an eyebrow when you ask what a TFSA does.

Sure, AI can explain financial concepts. The question is, can it actually give advice?

Here’s the first thing to understand. ChatGPT doesn’t think for itself. It pulls information from across the internet (the good, the bad, and the deeply outdated) and reshapes it into something that sounds smart. Sure, some of the content that AI generates is trained and reviewed by actual experts, but even then, it’s still relying on the quality of what’s out there to begin with.

And here’s where things start to fall apart.

Let’s say you ask a question about TFSA contribution limits or tax brackets. Sounds simple enough, but AI isn’t connected to live financial data, so you could be getting numbers that are one, two, or even three years out of date. And when that happens, those outdated numbers can quietly throw off your entire strategy.

That brings me to a very big elephant in the room: Unfortunately, when it comes to Canadian personal finance, the online advice pool is… pretty shallow. You won’t find deep dives or detailed breakdowns the way you might with U.S. content 

Why? In part it’s because Canadian financial professionals aren’t allowed to post personalized recommendations online. Regulators (for good reason) want to make sure advice is properly considered and in your best interest, which means AI doesn’t have a lot of high-quality, detailed information about Canadian personal finance to pull from. 

What fills the gap instead is content from unregulated, often unqualified voices. Influencers, bloggers, anonymous posters. Anyone can publish financial advice online, whether it’s accurate or not. And if that’s the bulk of what’s available, that’s what AI tools like ChatGPT are learning from.

So when you ask, “What should I actually do with my money?”, even if you get specific, the best case scenario is you’re getting a polished version of “it depends.” Worst case, you’re getting something that sounds confident but is completely wrong.

And the math? Let’s just say it doesn’t always hold up. We’ll unpack that in an upcoming issue.

I test AI tools like ChatGPT in my own financial planning work all the time, partly out of (morbid?) curiosity, and partly to stay on top of what clients are actually reading and asking out there in the world. Some of the answers I get from ChatGPT are surprisingly helpful… and some are definitely not.

So, I’m going to run an experiment on this.

I’m going to ask ChatGPT: “What are the most common personal finance questions Canadians ask you?”

And over the next few weeks, I’m going to test its answers. I’ll then share with you in a series of posts about what it gets right, what it misses, and what you actually need to know to make smart financial decisions.

Even if you never use AI tools, these posts are still going to give you useful, real-world insights because pointing out what’s missing also means highlighting what actually matters.

But before we get into all of that: I’d love your input on how you use these AI tools.

👉 https://sperofinancialgroup.fillout.com/t/mRTtFSCyaFus👈

I’ve put together a short, anonymous survey to better understand how people are using AI for personal finance. It’ll take less than 3 minutes! Your answers will help shape the next few posts I make so they’re actually useful to you.

We should also remember that ChatGPT and AI are just tools. We can learn how to use them smartly without falling into the trap of blindly assuming AI always has the answer, let alone the right answer for you and your life. AI can’t have your best interests in mind or discern between good or misleading information, it can only compile data and send it back to you.

But more on that soon. And yes, I’ll be bringing receipts!

Here’s the survey link again so you don’t forget to share your experience:

👉 https://sperofinancialgroup.fillout.com/t/mRTtFSCyaFus👈