AI and Your Financial Plan (What’s Coming?)

The leading frontier AI company launched a new personal finance tool this week called “Personal Finance in Claude”.

Users can connect their bank and credit card accounts via a “view-only” API and ask the AI for financial tips in plain language.

Some of you may already be using AI to monitor your money situation.

AI is astonishingly good, and is only getting better.

But I suspect the bulk of you want the AIs to STAY THE HELL OUT of your finances.

Also this week, Claude maker Anthropic launched “Artifacts”, its own version of a word processor, spreadsheet, and whiteboard collaboration tool, plus two new LLM models.

If that wasn’t enough, Anthropic updated its IPO terms and plans to go public next Thursday the 19th, targeting at least a $1.4 billion valuation.

That would make Anthropic the second-largest IPO ever behind SpaceX, but don’t be surprised if it surpasses it at its debut.

I’m all over this topic on my podcast and recently spoke to longtime early-retirement blogger ​Sam Dogen the Financial Samurai​ about the upcoming deal.

I’ve been reading his blog since 2012, so it was a blast having him on the show.

He thinks AI is coming for “100% of knowledge work”.

So what’s really happening with AI in personal finance and investing?

First of all, if you want nothing to do with AI, that’s an option.

No one is forcing you to use it. It may clog your social media feeds and increase spam and cybersecurity risks.

But if you want to avoid it, that’s no issue. Go hike in the woods.

Anthropic’s software coding platform Claude Code is so good at building applications autonomously that it’s cranking out new features faster than users can keep up.

On top of that, since these “vibe-coding” tools are so much more efficient at creating software, companies are making more software.

In the corporate world, there was always a business case for more and better software.

But before these AI tools, developers were limited and expensive.

Now that the best developers are 10 to 100 times more efficient at coding, software investments can reduce costs and improve growth and profitability.

I think the AI technology cycle will eventually create more jobs and opportunities.

But they will certainly displace some workers (including writers and editors!).

Some companies and employees won’t adapt and will eventually be disrupted.

Other companies are being created out of thin air and quickly find millions in revenue.

These tools are empowering solo developers to make software too.

For decades, just about everyone could create a fancy financial spreadsheet to track net worth, retirement, investments, and you name it.

But in the last few years, the LLMs and specialized platforms like Lovable, Replit, Cursor, Claude Code, and many others make developing new software apps almost as easy as a spreadsheet.

In the past six months, I’ve been pitched by dozens of ordinary people who built finance apps and are trying to find users.

The tools I’ve seen include dividend tracking apps, budgeting, DIY financial planning, investment research, crypto, and financial “everything apps”.

They ask me to try it for free, then do a video comparison to the existing tools that already do the thing really well!

My RBD YouTube presence is relatively small (fewer than 6,000 subscribers), so I suspect the larger creators have already been contacted and are working down the subscriber list.

Since I started writing online in 2013, I’ve watched dozens of new apps come and go. The trail of dead was long before vibe-coding. Now, dozens show up in a few months.

Software apps are the new spreadsheets.

With people so empowered to build new tools, design (how well it works) and distribution (how can you sell it) become the determining factors of success.

The AIs design VERY well.

Which brings me back to Anthropic. Earlier this year, you may have heard about the SaaSpocalypse, or the major disruption impacting companies that sell software-as-a-service.

The very idea that anyone can build software very quickly and at low cost raised fears that companies that rely on software subscriptions are under attack by Anthropic.

And if anyone can code for cheap, giant corporations can obviously build their own software too, eliminating the need for subscriptions.

Though valid, the fear was overblown in the short term.

But it speaks to the power of tools like Claude. If AI can build an entire software platform for personal finance, it can surely answer your basic questions.

And the more you share and work with the AI, some think (or fear) that the need for financial advisors and other “knowledge workers” in tax and finance won’t be needed.

Thus, the tools I recommend here could also someday be replaced by a chat window (if they can’t do it already).

But whatever your appetite for AI, the tools are already hyper-powerful and not slowing down.

So the new challenge is balancing the immense capabilities against our tolerance for a firehose of information and choices.

The tools are moving so fast it’s impossible to keep up. Many of us may never embrace them, no matter how powerful they get.

And that’s fine. In the end, it’s our human behaviors that impact our finances the most.

AI isn’t controlling that, at least not yet.