by Tyson Ray | CFP®, CEPA®, CIMA® Founding Partner, CEO, Senior Wealth Advisor
AI is becoming part of everyday life remarkably quickly. It can summarize information, analyze data, compare scenarios and answer questions in seconds. In financial planning, those capabilities can be useful, but there are some things we don’t believe should be handed over to AI.
I recently had a conversation with a client who had been experimenting with AI to project his retirement. Eventually, our conversation came around to a decision he was considering: should he pay off his mortgage when he retires, or keep the money invested and continue making payments?
AI can help analyze those options. It can compare interest rates, expected returns, cash flow, and the potential financial impact of either decision. What you might not be asking AI to decide for you is how you will feel about living with a mortgage in retirement.
What matters to you
AI is very good at working with facts. Give it enough information and the right prompt, and it can produce an extraordinary amount of analysis. But your financial life isn’t just an equation waiting to be solved. Maybe paying off your mortgage isn’t mathematically optimal under a particular set of assumptions, but becoming debt-free would give you a tremendous sense of freedom.
Maybe the opposite is true. Perhaps keeping more money available gives you greater flexibility and makes you feel more comfortable. The better question may be: which decision helps you live the life you want?
Asking the right questions
One of the limitations of using AI independently for financial decisions is the quality of its guidance can depend heavily on how you ask. Ask a question, and it will try to answer it – but what if you’re asking the wrong question? An important part of our role is sometimes challenging the premise itself. Instead of immediately answering, “should I pay off my mortgage?” we may first need to understand why you’re considering it. That conversation can lead somewhere very different from where the original question started.
Financial decisions frequently involve evaluating competing priorities rather than arriving at a single correct answer. AI can help us analyze those decisions more efficiently, but the value of human judgment in financial advice remains indispensable. That’s where we believe Advisor Intelligence matters alongside Artificial Intelligence; knowing the person behind the numbers well enough to combine financial information with experience, judgment, and an understanding of what matters most to them.
Where AI fits at FORM
At FORM, we’re interested in how AI can help us work more efficiently, analyze information and explore scenarios. Used well, technology can give us more time for the work that requires human judgement. Ultimately, we’re not simply trying to find the answer that produces the best number on a spreadsheet. Our planning approach begins with understanding your life—your family, goals and priorities—so we can help you make financial decisions that support the life you want to live. Our ability to help you live a better life comes from knowing you and your family over time and assisting you in making financial decisions that meet your goals.
