Americans are increasingly handing their financial decisions to A.I. Almost half of them have used tools like ChatGPT and Claude to manage their money, and 50% say they fully trust A.I. for financial advice. That’s according to First National Bank of Omaha’s 2025 Financial Wellbeing Study.
But how much trust is too much? Ancient wisdom and modern cautionary tales both tell us that too much of a good thing can be bad. While A.I. tools are still relatively new, their abilities are growing at a rapid pace, and Americans are eager to make finances easier. However, we need to not only be careful about handing over our data; we need to choose how much artificial advice we apply to our real lives.
Let’s start with the positives we see in A.I. First, tools like ChatGPT provide budgeting tools on demand that are personalized in seconds. What once required a sit-down with a financial adviser is now available to you the same day.
Try this: paste in a month’s worth of spending categories and amounts. For example, “I spent $500 on groceries, $300 on dining out, $100 on subscriptions, $150 on gas.” Then ask: “Can you break this down by category, identify where I’m overspending, and suggest where I could cut back to save $300 a month?” A.I. can offer a number of suggestions where it’s best to cut back, and it can even flag patterns that you may have initially overlooked.
A.I. is also helpful for exploring financial situations. It can be a powerful thinking tool that can help people stress-test goals or compare loan options. Remember, A.I. is more helpful when you put more context into the chat. Half the story will only generate half the solution – or worse, advice that misses the mark completely.
At First Florida Credit Union, we are exploring artificial intelligence benefits in our own operations. Like many other credit unions, we are using A.I. for tasks such as fraud detection, trend prediction and financial scenario modeling. The Northwestern Mutual 2025 Planning & Progress Study shows that more than half of Americans are comfortable with financial advisers using A.I. for such tasks.
Start by asking your bank or credit union what A.I.-powered alerts are available on your account. You may be surprised how much is already working behind the scenes on your behalf. A.I.-driven security tools are particularly skilled in monitoring member accounts around the clock, which would be impossible for any human team to do manually at scale. These tools can be:
Remember though, A.I. still gets things wrong. Chatbots are programmed to sound confident – about everything. An Investing in the Web report found that A.I. responded to 35% of financial queries incorrectly, with one in three answers being outright hallucinations, meaning it fabricated information entirely. A separate test by Money magazine found that A.I. tools struggle with current information. That said, human oversight and healthy suspicion are always warranted when dealing with A.I.
Lastly, we mentioned before that the more personal data you feed a chatbot, the more personalized its advice becomes, but that data doesn't always stay private. A 2025 IBM security report found that 13% of organizations reported breaches of A.I. models or applications. Even more concerning, 8% didn't even know if they had been compromised. Avoid entering information like your full Social Security number, account and routing numbers, full date of birth combined with your name and address and especially credit card or debit card numbers.
A.I. works best as a starting point, not a substitute for sound financial judgment. Despite growing A.I. adoption, most Americans still trust human advisers over A.I. alone for major financial decisions like retirement planning, investment management and developing a tailored financial plan.
At First Florida Credit Union, we believe in helping our members use every resource available to them confidently and safely, as well as knowing when to trust the technology – and when to pick up the phone.
