IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jjrfmx/v17y2024i6p241-d1412445.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

ChatGPT, Help! I Am in Financial Trouble

Author

Listed:
  • Minh Tam Tammy Schlosky

    (College of Business and Management, University of Illinois Springfield, Springfield, IL 62703, USA)

  • Serkan Karadas

    (College of Business and Management, University of Illinois Springfield, Springfield, IL 62703, USA)

  • Sterling Raskie

    (Gies College of Business, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL 61820, USA
    Blankenship Financial Planning, New Berlin, IL 62670, USA)

Abstract

This study examines the capability of ChatGPT to provide financial advice based on personal finance cases. We first write our own cases and feed them to ChatGPT to get its advice (recommendations) on them. Next, we assess the quality and the validity of ChatGPT’s recommendations on these cases. We find that ChatGPT serves as a suitable starting point, but its recommendations tend to be generic, and they often overlook alternative solutions and viewpoints and priority of recommendations. Overall, our analysis demonstrates the strengths and weaknesses of using ChatGPT in personal finance matters. Further, it serves as a helpful guide to financial advisors, households, and instructors of personal finance who are already using or considering using ChatGPT and want to develop a suitable understanding of the benefits and limitations of this new technology in addressing their professional and personal needs.

Suggested Citation

  • Minh Tam Tammy Schlosky & Serkan Karadas & Sterling Raskie, 2024. "ChatGPT, Help! I Am in Financial Trouble," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 17(6), pages 1-39, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jjrfmx:v:17:y:2024:i:6:p:241-:d:1412445
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/17/6/241/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/17/6/241/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pelster, Matthias & Val, Joel, 2024. "Can ChatGPT assist in picking stocks?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    2. Qianhua Liu & Ka-Ching Chan & Ranga Chimhundu, 2024. "Fintech research: systematic mapping, classification, and future directions," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 10(1), pages 1-33, December.
    3. Oehler, Andreas & Horn, Matthias, 2024. "Does ChatGPT provide better advice than robo-advisors?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    4. Dowling, Michael & Lucey, Brian, 2023. "ChatGPT for (Finance) research: The Bananarama Conjecture," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    5. Ko, Hyungjin & Lee, Jaewook, 2024. "Can ChatGPT improve investment decisions? From a portfolio management perspective," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ko, Hyungjin & Lee, Jaewook, 2024. "Can ChatGPT improve investment decisions? From a portfolio management perspective," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    2. Jeong, Woojin & Park, Seongwan & Lee, Seungyun & Son, Bumho & Lee, Jaewook & Ko, Hyungjin, 2024. "Influence and predictive power of sentiment: Evidence from the lithium market," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    3. Ma, Feng & Lyu, Zhichong & Li, Haibo, 2024. "Can ChatGPT predict Chinese equity premiums?," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    4. Song, Piaopeng & Lu, Hanglin & Zhang, Yongjie, 2024. "Unveiling tone manipulation in MD&A: Evidence from ChatGPT experiments," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 67(PA).
    5. Gregory, Gadzinski & Vito, Liuzzi, 2024. "ChatGPT: A canary in the coal mine or a parrot in the echo chamber? Detecting fraud with LLM: The case of FTX," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    6. Zifeng Feng & Gangqing Hu & Bingxin Li & Jinge Wang, 2025. "Unleashing the power of ChatGPT in finance research: opportunities and challenges," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 11(1), pages 1-26, December.
    7. Kevin He & Ran Shorrer & Mengjia Xia, 2025. "Human Misperception of Generative-AI Alignment: A Laboratory Experiment," Papers 2502.14708, arXiv.org.
    8. Beckmann, Lars & Hark, Paul F., 2024. "ChatGPT and the banking business: Insights from the US stock market on potential implications for banks," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    9. Smales, Lee A., 2023. "Classification of RBA monetary policy announcements using ChatGPT," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 58(PC).
    10. Ali Trabelsi Karoui & Sonia Sayari & Wael Dammak & Ahmed Jeribi, 2024. "Unveiling Outperformance: A Portfolio Analysis of Top AI-Related Stocks against IT Indices and Robotics ETFs," Risks, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-21, March.
    11. Wei, Tian & Wu, Han & Chu, Gang, 2023. "Is ChatGPT competent? Heterogeneity in the cognitive schemas of financial auditors and robots," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 1389-1396.
    12. Hassnian Ali & Ahmet Faruk Aysan, 2023. "What will ChatGPT revolutionize in the financial industry?," Modern Finance, Modern Finance Institute, vol. 1(1), pages 116-129.
    13. Luo, Haohan & Liu, Xin & Lv, Xingyang & Hu, Yubei & Ahmad, Ali J., 2024. "Investors’ willingness to use robo-advisors: Extrapolating influencing factors based on the fiduciary duty of investment advisors," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    14. Alonso-Robisco, Andres & Carbó, José Manuel, 2023. "Analysis of CBDC narrative by central banks using large language models," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 58(PC).
    15. Christian Fieberg & Lars Hornuf & David J. Streich, 2023. "Using GPT-4 for Financial Advice," CESifo Working Paper Series 10529, CESifo.
    16. Li-Yuan Huang & Xun Zhang & Qiang Wang & Zhen-Song Chen & Yang Liu, 2024. "Evaluating Media Knowledge Capabilities of Intelligent Search Dialogue Systems: A Case Study of ChatGPT and New Bing," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 15(4), pages 17284-17307, December.
    17. repec:osf:socarx:ub92z_v1 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Li Xian Liu & Zhiyue Sun & Kunpeng Xu & Chao Chen, 2024. "AI-Driven Financial Analysis: Exploring ChatGPT’s Capabilities and Challenges," IJFS, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-35, June.
    19. Dong, Mengming Michael & Stratopoulos, Theophanis C. & Wang, Victor Xiaoqi, 2024. "A scoping review of ChatGPT research in accounting and finance," International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    20. Yuqi Nie & Yaxuan Kong & Xiaowen Dong & John M. Mulvey & H. Vincent Poor & Qingsong Wen & Stefan Zohren, 2024. "A Survey of Large Language Models for Financial Applications: Progress, Prospects and Challenges," Papers 2406.11903, arXiv.org.
    21. Ardekani, Aref Mahdavi & Bertz, Julie & Bryce, Cormac & Dowling, Michael & Long, Suwan(Cheng), 2024. "FinSentGPT: A universal financial sentiment engine?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jjrfmx:v:17:y:2024:i:6:p:241-:d:1412445. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.