I Plugged My Finances Into ChatGPT. The Retirement Age It Gave Me Is a Total Nightmare.

The AI Takeover of Your Wallet

In 2024, you can ask an AI to write a song, create a business plan, or even debug code. But what about the biggest financial question of your life: when can you finally retire? With nearly half of all Americans now using AI tools for their personal finances, according to a recent Experian survey, we decided to put the world's most famous chatbot to the ultimate test. The answer we received wasn't just surprising—it was downright terrifying.

The Terrifying Experiment

Could a large language model (LLM) like ChatGPT replace the nuanced advice of a human financial advisor? To find out, we fed it a straightforward set of personal financial data: our current age, total savings, annual 401(k) contributions, and a realistic estimate for monthly spending during retirement. We braced for a number, perhaps a little later than we'd hoped, but what the AI spit back was a digital gut punch.

The verdict: a bleak retirement at age 92.

That’s right. According to the cold, hard logic of the algorithm, the dream of enjoying a leisurely retirement in our 60s or 70s was a fantasy. Instead, ChatGPT painted a grim picture of working for decades beyond the traditional retirement age, essentially until the very end of life. The prospect of a “normal” retirement seemed to evaporate in an instant, replaced by a depressing, seemingly endless career.

Can We Trust the Bots?

This shocking result immediately raises a critical question. While AI can process numbers with inhuman speed, does it understand the human element of financial planning? To see if this grim forecast was a fluke, we presented ChatGPT's findings to its main rivals, including Google's Gemini and Microsoft's Copilot, for a digital second opinion. The responses from the various AIs ranged from equally pessimistic to slightly more optimistic, highlighting a major flaw: a lack of consensus.

This experiment serves as a stark warning for the 47% of people leaning on AI for financial guidance. These tools can be useful for simple calculations, but they lack the ability to strategize, understand your life goals, or offer the empathetic, tailored advice that defines a good human financial advisor. When the stakes are as high as your life's savings, a chatbot's brutal, context-free calculation might do more harm than good. For now, the dream of a comfortable retirement is still a goal best planned with a human touch.