How Do You Find the Right Financial Advisor? Part 4

Can ChatGPT handle your financial planning? Dave explains why people should still be very careful.

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We’re finally done this series on finding a financial advisor. Last video. Woo-hoo. Is there anyone out there still watching? My dad? Anyone? I admit, these did get a little long. So I’m gonna speed this one up. Okay, big question people ask: “Can’t I just use AI as my financial planner?” Mo will yell, “No!” She has been screwing around with ChatGPT and the other LLMs for months now, and financial-planning questions have been fired away.

Not close to good enough, frankly. Some answers are amazing. I’ll admit: better than my responses I would’ve given. In fact, I asked an LLM the other day about group disability plans and was beyond impressed with what came back. But, yikes, there are still way too many errors. A couple of months ago, we received three consecutive incorrect responses around pretty basic RESP questions. Responses that could have pushed an uninformed consumer down the wrong path.

Last week, Mo sent me a “conversation” she had with an LLM around a retirement-income plan she was looking at. Holy shmokes, it kept screwing up pre-tax, post-tax, confusing them, even after Mo pointed out the mistakes. These things still struggle with math. Sure, there’ll be improvements, APIs, checks and balances, et cetera, but right now be careful. Very.

Also, the average person often underestimates how much a good planner needs to know about you before he or she can give an appropriate response. “Should I pay off my 8% car loan?” I don’t know. Do you have credit-card debt? Do you have a group-RRSP match available? Et cetera. Does the LLM always know to ask for all the needed info before responding?

Does the user, who often—usually—is not a financial-planning expert, truly know how to construct the prompt? We’ve been working on a Wealthy Barber AI for a year now with a great tech firm. Using RAG and CAG and APIs to deterministic software, my voice… it’s not there yet. This is tough stuff. Again, careful.

Next, how do you even find the candidates to ask the questions we outlined in Video 3? Well, first, I wouldn’t worry too much at all about whether they’re in the same city as you are. This can be done quite effectively through remote meetings. Now, I recognize some of you may only be comfortable with most of your meetings being face-to-face.

I get that. Heck, I’m kind of that way, so this advice is a little bit hypocritical. Secondly, contact the great advisors we’ve had on our podcast series and say, “Hey, if you couldn’t handle the business, whom would you send your mother/son/whomever to?” That’s a good one. Most of the best know each other. Quite often, very well.

That’s what I’d do. Now, do not tell them I sent you. Use Mo’s name. Finally, ask friends and colleagues in your circle for references, but be cautious here. Often people equate liking their advisor with their advisor being excellent doesn’t always work that way. Once you get the referral, don’t assume anything.

That’s just the starting spot. Go back to the earlier videos to review where you go from there. That’s it! Promise.