Genuine versus Artificial Intelligence

**Economics Matters — Blog/Podcast/Financial Riddler/MaxiFi Puzzler **

I asked Perplexity AI and ChatGPT if conventional financial planning was using the same methodology it used 50 years ago. Both said yes and both graciously offered to build me a conventional plan. They said a growing number of households are using them, not financial planners, to do conventional planning. Why? Because they are quicker, as accurate, available 24-7, and free.

Why can LLMs replicate conventional financial planning? The reason is not that LLMs are so brilliant. The reason is that conventional planning (CP) is so simple. It’s simple because CP isn’t actually financial planning, at least not what economists recognize as such. CP was designed by the financial industry to gather AUM (assets under management) on which the industry charges fees. Thus, CP comprises a sales pitch, one with just enough financial lingo and mathematical veneer to convince households to hand over their money to be “managed?”

How CP Works

You meet with your planner. Their first question:

“How much do you want to spend in retirement?”

Your answer:

“A trillion dollars a day.”

They say,

“Sorry. Not even Elon can afford that. Let’s use the industry’s standard .80 income-replacement ratio to set your retirement-spending target. You ok with spending 80 percent of your pre-retirement income year in and year out in retirement?”

You say,

“Absolutely! Given how little I’ve saved, how little I save, and how conservatively I invest, I never thought I could spend, actually cruise, that much. ”

They say,

“Well, let’s make sure you can make your target.”

This is classic bait and switch. You’re baited with a target that’s generally miles more than you can safely afford. And then you’re switched — you’re told it’s your target.

“I’ll run you through my Monte Carlo simulator 1000 times. Each time, I’ll randomly draw annual investment returns and accumulate up and decumulate down your assets taking into account three things — your current assets, your pre-retirement saving, and your post-retirement targeted spending. I’ll then calculate the share of these simulations that succeed.”

*Where’s the mathematical veneer? It’s in these words: income-replacement rate, Monte Carlo simulations, random draws, probability, and succeed. *

“Oh, gee. Sorry. Your plan only has a 35 percent chance of success. The reason’s clear. You’re investing far too conservatively. But here’s the good news. I ran the simulator based on my managing your money. It shows a safe 85 percent success probability. How did I rescue your plan? I invested you in my preferred stocks. Stocks are, as you know, safe long term. So, not to worry. Check out cruises and leave the rest to me.”

*More financial malfeasance. An 85 percent chance of success is an unmentioned 15 percent chance of failure, i.e., a 15 percent chance of ending up with zero assets at some point in retirement, including the first day you retire. Probabilities are averages. Take the number of times the roulette wheel lands on red 19 divided by the number of spins. That’s the probability of landing on red 19. It’s an average. But none of us bet based on averages. Elon and his ilk aside, none of us would take a 50-50 bet on winning or losing even $1K. *

*We are all risk averse for good reason. The pain from losing is far greater than the pleasure from winning. If we cared just about average outcomes, we’d never buy insurance. We’d say, “Sure our house can burn down. But not on average.” Finally, stocks aren’t safe long term. Yes, the longer you hold stocks, the higher the chance of a big final pot. But longer holding periods gives stocks more time to proverbially hit the fan — go to zero. If stocks were safe long-term, no one would buy long-term inflation-indexed bonds at the far lower safe rate they yield. *

*As for the “fact” that stocks have beat TIPs over all 30-year holding periods since 1935, that’s just more evidence that ‘figures lie and liars figure’. That statement doesn’t reference observations of 30 independent returns because the same annual returns are being used repeatedly. E.g., the cumulative stock returns between 1930 and 1960 and between 1931 and 1961 use 28 of the same annual returns — those between 1931 and 1960. Here’s the truth. We only have 3 independent obervations of 30-year cumulative stock market returns to consider over the past century. That’s 3 data points. A fourth 30-year cumulative stock return is the return on the Nikei between 1989 and 2019. In 2019, it was 55 percent lower in real terms than it was 1989. *

*Of course, none of this goes through your head. You’re already on the cruise, floating in the pool, four martinis to the wind. Hence, *

You say,

“Sign me up.”

As described here, since CP doesn’t actually do financial planning, it doesn’t correctly answer any financial questions — be they how much to save, how to invest, what job to take, where to live, whether to rent or buy, how much life insurance to hold, when to retire, when to take Social Security, how much and when to Roth convert — you name it.

**The Irony of Quick and Dirty **

An LLM can estimate your pre-retirement income, multiply it by .80, and run Monte Carlo simulations in a nanosecond. It can also robo-invest your money based on achieving a 85 percent success probability. Thus, AI is about to bite Wall Street in the derriere — not just in providing what Wall Street calls financial advice, but in doing up to 40 percent of all adviser tasks.

Don’t take this from me. I just asked Perplexity AI, “Can you replace my financial adviser?” It answered, “In many areas I can effectively stand in for a traditional adviser on analysis, modeling, and what‑if strategy design.” I then asked “How many financial advisers will likely be replaced by AI?” Its answer: “A plausible medium term picture is up to 30 percent fewer advisers.”

Can AI Do Economics-Based Financial Planning?

Perplexity’s answer:

“Yes. AI can implement economics‑based (life‑cycle, consumption‑smoothing, utility‑maximizing) financial planning in principle and, in some niches, already does parts of it in practice.”

I’m not sure who trained LLMs to exaggerate its capacities. But when it comes to economics-based financial planning (EBP), LLMs are badly hallucinating as I’ll demonstrate below using my company’s MaxiFi Planner.

MaxiFi is the only software that does EBP. Yes, some CP tools, like Boldin, are now using EBP lingo, including “consumption smoothing,” as part of their pitch to sell their software and manage your money. But talking the talk and walking the walk are two very different things.

AI Can’t Do EBP. It Can’t Solve Extremely Difficult, Unfamiliar Math Problems

Economics-based planning references simultaneously solving the basic, highly detailed equations of household finance. These equations were developed by a Who’s Who of economists and one polyglot mathematician over the past century. The list includes Irving Fisher, John von Neumann (the polyglot), Oscar Morgenstern, Harry Markowitz, James Tobin, William Sharpe, Menahem Yaari, Paul Samuelson, and Robert Merton.

These economists tackled different problems. Fisher focused on consumption smoothing — saving enough to maintain your living standard in retirement. von Neuman and Morgenstern developed economics’ expected utility approach to uncertainty. Yaari clarified the economics of longevity risk, including the roles of life and annuity insurance. Markowitz, Tobin, and Sharpe considered static (households live for one period) optimal portfolio choice. And Samuelson and Merton examined optimal dynamic portfolio and saving decisions where households are making interconnected decisions over their lifetimes.

MaxiFi solves the equations of household finance simultaneously, which means all its answers are internally consistent. But it does so taking into account something the fathers of finance left out — our crazy complex fiscal system, with 500 plus federal and state tax and benefit programs, plus household-specific cash-flow constraints.

These factors make the elegant, if highly complex, equations of household finance extremely ugly, introducing, in mathematical terms, non differentiabilities, non convexities, and discontinuities. MaxiFi jointly solves these ugly equations in seconds. Its solutions are exact, unique, and immediately verifiable from its reports.

Yet the tool is highly user friendly and its findings make immediate sense. This, at least, is Bankrate’s view, which ranked MaxiFi the best financial planning tool of 2025. So, above the hood, we’re talking about just stepping on a gas peddle and steering. Below the hood, we’re talking about 33-years of actual intelligence — human intelligence — slowly but surely solving a problem that no one believed could remotely be solved.

Financial Planning Is Not a Guessing Game

MaxiFi computes its answers to the dollar using an array of pathbreaking algorithms to which LLMs don’t have access. Nor can they run MaxiFi with large data to approximate MaxiFi’s answers. Instead of admitting they can’t do EBP, they provide quick, piecemeal answers based on the wrong algorithms with no concern for internal consistency — answers that are, routinely, wildly off the mark.

In short, using LLMs to do EBP is like using a hammer to open a beer bottle. They are the wrong tools for the problem. Indeed, the best way for an AI company to do EBP would be to solicit data in its front end and use MaxiFi as its backend. Why guess at the wrong answer when you can instantly provide the right answer?

**AI Is Miles Off the Mark — an Illustration **

Meet John and Jane — a middle aged, upper-income, New Jersey couple with three children, ages 1, 3, and 6. The couple has a house with a mortgage, retirement accounts, 529 plans, special expenses, retirement plans, and the list goes on. Indeed, you can see all 28 pieces of the couple’s financial information that I entered into both MaxiFi and Claude. This may seem like a lot of inputs. But every household has a lot going on. This includes contingent plans — what will happen if one spouse dies. For example, were John to pass, Jane will stop working until the kids leave home.

To keep things simple, I assumed that the couple can earn a fixed real return on all its investments. John and Jane face considerable cash-flow issues. In the short term, they have three mouths to feed, three 529s to fund, a mortgage to pay off, alimony to cover, and retirement accounts to fund.

MaxiFi determines what the couple can spend each year to smooth its living standard without going into debt. Living standard references the couple’s discretionary spending per household member with the listed adjustments for the relative cost of children and economies of shared living. Discretionary spending excludes fixed spending on taxes, housing, 529 and retirement account contributions, life insurance premiums, federal and state taxes, IRMAA premiums, and the couple’s special expenses on alimony and out-of-pocket healthcare.

This consumption-smoothing problem is deterministic and unique. This means it only has one set of mutually consistent correct answers. You can see from MaxiFi’s reports that the program is finding those answers. An example is its lifetime balance sheet, which shows that the present value of John and Jame’s lifetime resources equals, to the dollar, the present value of their lifetime outlays — fixed and discretionary. Another is that the couple’s living standard rises as they become less and less cash-flow constrained, in their case, as the kids leave home, as they pay off their mortgage, and as they start receiving Social Security and retirement account withdrawals. More precisely, the couple’s regular assets always zero out before their living standard rises since bringing money into a period when your living standard is higher makes no sense.

So,

What is the couple’s discretionary spending this year?

MaxiFi’s correct answer: $43,347.

Claude’s incorrect answer: $53,546.

*Claude’s too high by 24 percent. Worse, its advice will leave the couple unable to spend even $43,347 through 2030 when John is required to withdrawal the principal of his inherited IRA. *

Here’s ChatGPT’s answer: “Their discretionary spending in 2026 is essentially ~$0, very tight, possibly slightly negative given the assumptions.” Here’s Perplexity AI’s answer: “Using the simplifying assumptions I coded, their 2026 discretionary spending comes out negative, about −134K for the household.”

—

What is the couple’s discretionary spending in today’s dollars in 2050?

MaxiFi’s correct answer: $102,562.

Claude’s incorrect answer: $137,491

Claude’s off by 34 percent.

How much life insurance should John and Jane hold this year to ensure survivors can enjoy, to the dollar, the same living standard?

MaxiFi’s correct answer: John needs $2.191 million, Jane needs $1.577 million.

Claude’s incorrect answer: John needs $1.410 million. Jane needs $1.355 million.

Claude’s too low by 55 percent on John’s insurance and 16 percent on Jane’s insurance.

How much does the present value of the couple’s federal plus state taxes change if John contributes to a Roth rather than a regular IRA?

MaxiFi’s correct answer: They fall by $9,463.

Claude’s incorrect answer: They fall by $111,000.

Claude’s off by 1,173 percent.

**How much can John and Jane raise their lifetime discretionary spending if they both collect Social Security at 70? **

MaxiFi’s correct answer: It rises by $361,180.

Claude’s incorrect answer — It rises by $156,481.

Claude’s too low by 43 percent.

I could go on. I could also compare MaxiFi with all other LLMs and find similar huge mistakes. And, I could compare MaxiFi’s investment advice, which is day and night different from AI’s because AI was trained to spit back CP investment “advice”.

Bottom Line

When it comes to financial planning, conventional planning is here to take your money and run. Likewise, AI is here to take conventional planners’ money and run. My advice to conventional planners— switch to MaxiFi. It’s what a century of economics recommends. It’s not built on conflicted, dangerous rules of dumb. It’s far cheaper. And it’s safe against AI. Most important, it fulfills your fiduciary obligation and will provide true job satisfaction in enriching, protecting, and improving your clients’ lives. At a minimum, use MaxiFi to check the plans you’re providing your clients. You’ll immediately see the enormous difference.

My advice for DYIers? Join the tens of thousands of ordinary Americans shelling out $109 and using MaxiFi on their own. Bankrate’s best financial planning tool of 2025 wasn’t “best for advisers,” it was best for individual households. As for households using advisers, make sure they run you through MaxiFi to make sure you are getting economics-based advice, not a well honed sales pitch.

If the above sounds like a sales pitch, it is. But there is nothing wrong pitching financial health at a trivial cost. And it’s coming from someone you can trust. I’m not rich, but I’m not, as are so many professionals, focused on money. Boston University’s salary is just fine. This is why I’ve never taken a penny in salary or other income from my company in a third of a century. My goal has always been and will always be to make MaxiFi affordable for individual households as well as advisers who wish to deliver appropriate financial solutions, not put their clients in harm’s way.

As for AI doing economics based financial planning, forgetaboutit. AI’s here to brag and produce terribly wrong answers to terribly important financial questions — about your saving, your spending, your taxes, your education, your career, yo…