Should You Share Your Financial Information with AI Bots?
No matter how old-school you think you are, no matter how much you want to see movies and listen to music created by real people, no matter how much you want to use spreadsheets to figure out where you’re headed for retirement, no matter how much you want to make friends and get emotional support from something that touches your heart, I’ve come to this conclusion over the past few years, and your life is inevitable.
I began my journalism career in newspapers, which had already weathered the storms brought by radio and TV at the beginning of the 20th century. Then, journalism turned to blogs and the Internet. After that, we turn to the video. Then, search engine optimization became the wave of the future. The business of journalism can be very heavy on that.
Now, it’s all about AI, and no matter how excited you or I are about the current and future revolution when machine learning will descend upon us, it all seems inevitable. And many industries, including journalism, seem unprepared for the fall.
The AI bubble may eventually burst and cause chaos in the financial world. Those scary robot dogs of Boston Dynamics might rise up and destroy us all. And the AI slop that has infiltrated our Facebook news and Instagram reels may be causing our brains to rot.
But AI, whether recommending the White Coat Investor or talking about its limitations when issuing financial advice, is not going anywhere.
And many people are now making easier choices when it comes to financial planning. They ask ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude for a plan they can follow to build wealth, pay less tax, or use it in retirement. Whether that is a good idea is questionable. Even ChatGPT had this to say when I asked it last June if people could trust chatbots for good financial advice: “You got to the heart of a big, ongoing debate—can people trust chatbots like ChatGPT for financial advice? The honest answer is: not entirely—and not yet. But it’s possible in a limited, intelligent, and clearly understandable way.”
In order to get a specific AI designed program, you will probably need to enter your data online. For those who feel hesitant to do so because of concerns about data breaches, identity fraud, and government eavesdropping, here’s a question: is that a good idea?
Sharing financial information with AI
Should you give up your financial knowledge for some LLM advice? The answer is probably not.
“Anytime you’re sharing your personal, non-public information with a non-financial services provider, frankly, that’s not closely regulated—where information sharing practices aren’t as regulated as they are regulated as a financial institution—there’s a concern,” Chris Powell, head of deposits at Citizens Bank, told Money.com.
While AI may be fine for general financial advice, that doesn’t mean sharing your personal and sensitive information is a smart move—or even a useful one at all.
As someone in IT I know and trust told me:
“I think it’s probably not a good idea to trust any advice you get from those tools. That’s probably the real problem. That might be a bigger problem than sharing. . . . It’s probably good to share general information, but do you really expect different general advice than what you already know? I think those asking this question may be asking permission to not follow the facts they already know, etc. . . .”
Also consider that Gemini and ChatGPT keep your chat history and that some of those chats are reviewed by Google and OpenAI employees to “improve quality,” which means there is a remote possibility that your information could be used in bad ways by a bad actor.
“For now, it’s best not to include any confidential financial information in the LLM tool,” Alastair Paterson, CEO and founder of Harmonic Security, told Money.com.
I even asked ChatGPT about it.
More worryingly, it was reported last summer that Google had started indexing ChatGPT conversations, which means that those pieces of information that provide LLM may turn up in someone else’s Google search. OpenAI quickly disabled that capability, but that doesn’t mean the same thing won’t happen in the future.
After all, how many people’s private thoughts and photos have been hacked for the whole world to see?
But Human Knowledge Is There Anyway, Right?
A few months ago on the WCI Facebook group, one user said they used LLMs to run Monte Carlo scenarios on their retirement portfolio (although that person also talked about AI’s “propensity to do things”), and someone suggested using ChatGPT for help with contract negotiations. But apart from that, WCI Facebook group members, who are probably more financially literate than most people, are very interested in getting their information and seeking advice from people.
Which was a pleasant surprise.
On some platforms, however, the idea of using ChatGPT to build a portfolio using personal information is a more accepted practice. And I see the point. Why pay a financial advisor thousands of dollars a year when you can ask an AI bot for your help? As one person on the Bogleheads forum wrote last year,
“I hired a fee-only financial planner to discuss retirement planning. I expect to pay him about $7,000 by the time we’re done. Out of curiosity, I sent a detailed description of our finances to ChatGPT (the free version) and asked for a Roth conversion plan and suggested asset allocation for each account. philosophy. The planner is still working on a Roth conversion strategy, and the Chat summary said we don’t have a good chance of conversion because we don’t have a tax year. the lower ones.
Also, isn’t most of our personal information sitting out there on the Internet, ready to be stolen or sold, anyway? And don’t the credit reporting agencies have much of your information stolen and leaked? It’s the same with password managers, right? And don’t budget for the apps you know and love that already use built-in AI assistants?
And back to my original question: is AI inevitable anyway?
Of course, but why give thieves or bad actors even more access to your bank and retirement accounts by telling that information to Claude and Gemini?
“I don’t think there is much benefit in sharing your financial information with ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini,” said a trusted IT friend of mine. “There’s a risk in sharing anything with those tools, so the risk/reward ratio doesn’t make sense to do it.”
If you’re tempted to use chatbots to get financial help, here’s what not to include in the conversation:
- Your bank/investment account numbers
- Your Social Security Number
- Any logins or passwords
- Your full name, address, and date of birth
- Tax returns or pay stubs
- Any of your crypto passwords and keys
- The names of old pets, the street address where you grew up, your mother’s maiden name, and the name of your primary school
I won’t be putting my personal information on LLMs anytime soon. But what do I know? I will always consider myself a newspaper guy, because that’s where I started my career and what I love. But I haven’t received a newspaper in years.
Technology advances, things change, and things we swore we wouldn’t do have become too easy not to do—and if AI takes over the world and destroys the way we’ve known it, it’s not like any of this will matter.
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Money Song of the Week
Your parents give you life, and they pass their values on to you. When you eventually have children, you will probably do the same for them. As a parent, you hope they will take in all the positive aspects of your lifestyle and ignore the things you are not proud of. You hope they can be better than you.
Although today’s Money Song is not about money or finances, it is still relevant nonetheless. Here’s what a WCIer wrote in the comments section of the podcast show Post Notes from 2025:
“I feel that my family could not afford competitive sports when I was young. When my daughters had the opportunity to participate in competitive sports, at first I was reluctant to spend money, but my husband convinced me of its value. He grew up playing competitive hockey, and he shared how it challenged him, taught him to develop confidence in a difficult situation, and to be able to persevere in a positive situation. What we do for our daughters, and although I am very grateful that we can give them this, I also feel the challenge of teaching them humble gratitude, and compassion for others who cannot participate.
Another thing that made me think about this recently, is that I recently heard the song Unsung Hero by For King + Country, and it inspired me to focus on, ‘What values do I want to pass on to our children?’ It is a work in progress, and I have seen part of what I want to pass on to be an example of finding my true purpose in humbly serving others. . . Along with this, I am learning how to look at our finances as part of how we can serve others.”
I’ve been listening to King + Country’s 2022 song Unsung Hero, and yes, you have to admit that it would be one of the greatest accomplishments of your life if one (or more) of your children wrote a song about you with a chorus like this.
“You’re as strong as your father, even if you’re afraid/When I was in trouble, you didn’t leave me there/And you love like your mother, like nothing is lost/You’re an unsung hero, so I’ll sing this song to you.”
As Luke and Joel Smallbone, who form the Christian pop group, told Billboard, the song honors their parents’ decision to move from Australia to the US with their six children after their father David’s music business lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. After arriving in Nashville, the family “cleaned houses, raked leaves, mowed lawns, did any odd jobs you could find” to survive in the new place.
As Luke Smallbone told Cross Rhythms, “I think mom and dad really proved that struggle is guaranteed in this world. And what are you going to do about it? I think that’s the thing when you look back, years and years, you start to see a person with a hope and a dream. And we all have hopes and we all have dreams. But sometimes you don’t hear about the hopes, and you don’t really hear about your hopes, and you don’t hear about your hopes. And you move on to something, a new dream, a new hope, hopefully it will succeed.”
More info here:
Every Money Song of the Week Ever Published
Facebook Video of the Week
As we bid a tearful farewell to actor James Van Der Beek, who died of cancer this week at the age of 48, here is one of his amazing messages from March 2025. It’s not about money, but I hope it warms your heart.
Have you ever given your personal information to an AI? Can you ever? If not, what worries you? Do you trust AI for anything?
