Mr MoneyJar on the pros and cons of using AI as your financial adviser

I’m Rotimi Merriman-Johnson – Big Issue Ambassador and finance content creator.

I’ve been creating content about money since 2019 and in that time, I’ve watched my audience go from asking me how ISAs work to wondering whether they should trust ChatGPT to manage their budget.

ChatGPT first launched in late 2022 and I went from tinkering with it occasionally to using AI tools multiple times
a day, every single day. The technological shift over the past few years has been remarkable but as with all technology it can be a double-edged sword.

For the first couple of years, I used AI in much the same way people used Google – as a search engine that could provide quick and easy answers to everyday questions.

“What is the current annual ISA allowance?” or “How much do I need to save into my pension every month to be able to retire by a certain age?” – that sort of thing. I’d generate content, produce images and pull up information. It felt novel, but fairly basic.

Now, my relationship with it has changed entirely. I use AI as a technology layer rather than a tool in and of itself. It helps me work faster and more efficiently, summarise large amounts of information and – perhaps most surprisingly – I even use it for journaling and self-reflection.

I recently asked an AI tool to run a ‘5 Whys’ analysis on my financial goals. The 5 Whys is a problem-solving framework popularised by Toyota founder Kiichiro Toyoda. The idea is that when you’re presented with a problem, you can uncover its root cause by asking ‘Why?’ five times.

I told the AI – quite vulnerably, I might add – that I wanted to become a millionaire by the end of the decade. By the time it reached the fifth ‘why’, it had uncovered something far more useful: what I was actually seeking was financial stability and security.

As a content creator who earns through brand partnerships, my income can be feast or famine. The AI helped me realise that chasing a specific net-worth figure was really a proxy goal. 

What I actually wanted was consistent cash flow and greater certainty, which I could build by offering products and services directly to my audience.

I found that genuinely useful. I’ve done therapy in person, so I’m familiar with the language and the frameworks. AI isn’t a replacement for that, but it can help me think more deeply about my motivations and behaviours. I use it for that purpose regularly.

Could AI do my job?

I don’t think AI could do what I do – at least not yet. But I’m happy to revisit that conversation in a few years.

What I offer my audience, who are largely black Brits in the UK, is a trusted voice from a specific community. I’m a real human being with lived experiences that are shared by millions of people across the country. In the same way I don’t think people are going to be dating robots anytime soon, I don’t think AI is going to replace me.

The creator economy is built on authenticity. There are family creators who talk about finances while raising children. There are creators who speak to first-generation wealth builders. There are niche communities within niche communities. AI, for all its power, cannot yet offer that lived experience or personal connection.

It can help me reach more people, more quickly, and draw insights from existing information – but it can’t be me.

Nearly four in 10 Britons have turned to AI tools for personal financial guidance, according to 2025 research from Finder. A Lloyds Banking Group study found that more than 28 million UK adults – over half the adult population – have used AI in the past year to help manage their money, making personal finance the nation’s most common use case for the technology.

That tells you something important: people are hungry for financial information, and AI has lowered the
barrier to accessing it.

But there’s a critical distinction I always make: the difference between guidance and advice.

Guidance is non-prescriptive. It’s general information about how things work, financial principles and frameworks for thinking. 

AI is genuinely good at this. You tend to get out what you put in – if you ask thoughtful questions, you’ll often receive useful answers.For example, if you want to understand why you’re overspending on takeaways, you could upload your bank transactions to an AI tool and ask it to analyse your spending patterns, identify when you’re most likely to order food, and help you uncover the underlying behaviours driving those decisions.

I’m fairly certain that if I uploaded my Deliveroo order history, it would spot a familiar pattern: takeaways being ordered either late at night or towards the end of the week. During a tiring working week, willpower only gets you so far.

Advice, on the other hand, is specific. Do this. Buy this investment. Make this decision.

AI cannot reliably provide that because it doesn’t have the complete picture that a qualified professional would gather. And frankly, I don’t think it should try.

Read more:

• How to have summer fun without splashing the cash, according to Mr MoneyJar
• Where to get free financial advice now – from benefits to budgeting
• Will AI be the end of humanity?

Limitations of AI

There are also genuine limitations to be aware of. AI still hallucinates when it lacks exact information. 

I once asked it to pull highlights from a podcast transcript in a chat where I had uploaded several previous transcripts. It confidently included material from a completely different episode.

On another occasion, I tested a leading AI tool on a specific detail – the maximum credit score available from Experian. It returned a figure based on the old scoring model (999), rather than the updated scale introduced in late 2025 (1,250).

That kind of error might seem minor, but if you’re making financial decisions based on thresholds, eligibility criteria or contribution limits, those details matter enormously.

My advice is simple: use AI as a starting point, not a finishing line.Then you should speak to the right specialist. For insurance, speak to an insurance adviser. Getting onto the property ladder? Speak to a mortgage broker. Accessing your pension for the first time? Talk to a pension specialist. Many finance professionals offer free
initial consultations.

It’s similar to healthcare. You wouldn’t ask Google to diagnose you and stop there. You’d see a doctor.

Looking to the future

Where I think AI could really shake things up is through agentic AI.

An AI agent doesn’t just answer questions – it performs tasks on your behalf.

In a recent Diary of a CEO roundtable, host Steven Bartlett used an AI agent to order food from Uber Eats using prompts on his phone. 

You could watch the phone autonomously navigate the app, select the order and arrange delivery to his home. 

Minutes later, a real human arrived with the food, leaving Steven only to provide the delivery code. It felt like magic.

Right now, we’re at level one: you ask, it responds.

Level two is coming: can you go away and open a bank account for me? Can you apply for this product? Can you create a report showing me my complete financial picture?

The implications go well beyond personal finance. As AI gets better at performing tasks autonomously, it becomes cheaper than hiring a junior member of staff – and that is already having real-world consequences. Youth unemployment in the UK currently stands at 16%, its highest rate since 2015 and higher than the peak
pandemic figure. 

In London, it’s closer to one in four young people aged 16 to 24. More than a million young people are now not in education, employment or training – the first time that figure has exceeded one million since 2013.

During his time as prime minister, I met with Keir Starmer several times at No 10 cost of living briefings. Whenever someone asked what his government was doing about youth unemployment, the answers never seemed to grapple with the profound implications AI may have for jobs, particularly entry-level roles.

The reality is stark. When it comes to routine, easily automated work, we’re developing technology that can replace people, and that transition is happening in real time.

It’s a reminder of how quickly technological shifts can reshape society. Consider London’s streets, which transitioned from horse-drawn transport to automobiles between the early 1900s and the 1940s, fundamentally changing the character of the city within a few decades.

The real magic is human + AI

When it comes to AI, the genie is out of the bottle. It isn’t going away.

A couple of centuries ago, the Industrial Revolution disrupted agricultural life faster than most people could comprehend. Factories, steam power and mechanisation changed everything – and a whole new world of opportunity emerged alongside the disruption. We get the word ‘Luddite’ from this period – referring to workers who smashed textile machinery in protest at losing their livelihoods to automation. They often attributed their actions to the mythical figure of Ned Ludd.

I suspect we’re witnessing something similar today. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s also full of possibility for those who understand where the world is going and position themselves accordingly. For me, the conclusion is simple: AI is extraordinarily powerful. I use it every day, and it has made me better at my job. But it also has real limitations. It can be generic, outdated and confidently wrong.

The responses I’ve tested on financial questions are often solid sevens out of 10. A helpful starting point – like  wearing rental boots on a ski slope. Functional, but not moulded to the shape of your foot. The real magic comes when you combine AI with human intelligence. Use it to explore ideas, summarise information and stress-test your thinking. Then bring in human expertise – a financial adviser, a mortgage broker, a pension specialist, or simply a trusted community voice that has walked the path before you. That combination is where the genuine breakthroughs will always happen.

Mr MoneyJar is a UK-based financial content creator. You can find him on Instagram and YouTube

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

Change a vendor’s life.

Buy from your local Big Issue vendor every week – and always take the magazine. It’s how vendors earn with dignity and move forward.

You can also support online:
Subscribe to the magazine or support our work with a monthly gift. Your support helps vendors earn, learn and thrive while strengthening our frontline services.

Thank you for standing with Big Issue vendors.