Why Millennials and Gen Z Are Ditching Human Advisors for AI

Financial advice comes from many different places, financial experts, your well-meaning family members, and even financial blogs. Today’s youth, however, are turning elsewhere for their information.

Over the past few years, artificial intelligence (AI) has taken the world by storm. There’s no doubt it’s a controversial subject. Yet, today’s youth are turning more and more toward ChatGPT and other engines for answers, and it’s for more than just answers to the latest math quiz.

A recent Experian report revealed Americans—particularly younger generations—are using AI to make money decisions.

Familiarity With Generative AI

Experian polled more than 2,000 adults and as was expected, the younger generations are more familiar with AI than the older ones. For example, 84% of Gen Zers, ages 18 to 27, are somewhat or very familiar with it compared to 40% of Boomers (ages 60 to 78) and 29% of Silent (ages 79+).

The majority of Millennials (79%) and Gen Xers (58%) are also familiar.

Using It to Manage Personal Finance

At least a percentage of those surveyed in each generation admitted to using the technology to learn about personal finance and/or to use it to manage their money, including:

• 67% of Gen Zers
• 62% of Millennials
• 41% of Gen Xers
• 28% of Boomers
• 23% of Silent

This is a trend that’s likely to increase as AI becomes more commonplace.

Staying Safe With AI

While AI definitely has its uses there are still many unknowns. Therefore, it’s important to go into using any platform, whether it’s OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or one of the other AIs, with safety in mind.

Here are some tips to protect your information and financial well-being.

Protect Your Information

AI might not be a person, but many of those platforms collect data to help improve performance and their offerings. Be careful what you put out there as the AI may store and use your user data.

Do not provide sensitive information such as Social Security or banking numbers, even if you’re using an organization tool provided or created by AI within the platform.

Question What You Read

Generative AI tends to pull from different sources, and those sources may not exactly be accurate. For this reason, it’s important to verify what you’re reading. You can also ask the AI to provide the sources for you, so you can verify the authenticity of the information provided and see where it came from.

For the most up-to-date information, it’s best to stick to well-known financial experts and/or seek out a financial expert.

Keep It Basic

AI can be helpful in providing basic information, such as what are the elements of financial literacy? What should you put in a budget?

For the more complex questions, such as those dealing with investments and taxes, AI is no substitute for a financial planner or expert who specializes in helping people, and knows the ins and outs of money.

“Old School” Works for a Reason

Don’t forget the traditional ways to manage your credit, either. You can download your credit report for free once a year. Do so, so you can look over your accounts and make sure nothing is missing or erroneously on the report.

You can also monitor your score and set up notifications for any changes or to alert you to activity.

Does AI Have a Place in Personal Finance?

This is my personal opinion, but I believe over time, it could be a valuable asset, perhaps not in providing information but in creating tools for people to help stay on top of their financials and helping promote financial literacy.

There are many GPTs out there that help streamline To-Do lists, create a work schedule, or help customize daily routines. So why couldn’t they be used to help streamline a household budget or similar? The point is to be very careful in what information you provide because it is the internet and there are people behind the machine.

Source: Experian.