Ep 43: Financial Bots are Here

The Setup:

Have you ever plugged your financial info to a website and gotten a retirement projection? As technology improves, how much can you trust these bots? Ben tried it for himself and got surprising results. We’ll share those plus talk about how useful these bots can be for planning.

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Click the timestamps below to skip to a specific topic in the episode.

The Combination and Key Points:

Have you seen the latest financial planning assistant that The Washington Post rolled out recently? They created a bot that acts as a retirement planner to help you navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond.

Sounds great, right? Well how much can this website – and others like it – be trusted for your financial future?

That’s what we want to discuss on this episode of Unlocking Your Financial Future. Ben Schrock took the time to go through the questions they ask and input his info as accurately as he could. The results he got from the bot were actually very surprising and he shares them on the show today.

And those results point to some of the reasons why technology can be great but also has its limitations. How much can a program determine about your retirement that’s unique to you? What are your plans for retirement? Will you need more or less income once you stop working? What other assets do you have that might not get accounted for in this questionnaire?

We utilize technology quite a bit in our office so we understand the benefits of the bots. As they continue to improve and expand, we will also take that into account when we work with clients to build the best plan possible for them.

If you’ve ever used a website like The Washington Post has rolled out, this episode will be a great listen for you. Hopefully you’ll get a better understanding of the pros and cons and why it’s still important to get a second opinion on any feedback you get.

Thanks for listening to another episode of Unlocking Your Financial Future. We’ll talk to you again next week!

1:06 – Ben wrote an article for Kiplinger about the topic of technology in the financial world.

2:16 – What was Ben’s first impression of this when he went through it.

2:48 – Ben got surprising results when he plugged in his info.

4:00 – Limitations of these bots.

4:58 – Great idea to get a second opinion on these results.

6:05 – How often do these get referenced when clients come in?

7:33 – How much has technology changed since Ben got into the industry?

9:12 – What technology does BA Schrock use with clients?