Add some AI (Artificial Intelligence) to Quicken to assist in financial planning etc

financeam

Hello,

I'd like to see some AI added to Quicken to help assist in financial planning and providing feedback in how users can improve their finances based on the spending patterns and income data that the AI will have access too.

It would almost be like having a built in financial planner analyzing where we could improve on spending (cutback) and how best to invest the savings to achieve goals.

Thanks,

Andrew

Jon

Please don't. The currently popular "AI" programs are not "intelligent" at all, and I wouldn't trust any answers they gave farther than I could throw a Cray-1. I certainly don't want them getting anywhere near my finances.

jacobs

First, many people would need to share their financial transaction data to build an anonymized dataset for any AI engine. There's no way most users will willingly share that data.

Second, how would compiled spending data lead to recommendations on how to cut back spending or saving for retirement or investing strategy? If I spend more on my housing costs (rent or mortgage) than you do, it could be due to the arrea of the country we each live in, when I bought my home verus you, how many people there are in our families, etc. How much we each put aside for savings could be impacted by our earnings, our expenses, our age, our anticipated needs for retirement spending, our desires about the estates we wish to leave to our heirs, and more. I might be an aggressive investor seeking large gains at more risk while you might be a more conservative investor averse to risk. How would Quicken know about this without us filling out an investing questionnaire? Those are just a few examples. Unless Quicken had tons of information about every user which it currently does not, I don't think it could begin to create a good financial planning recommendation engine.

Adding this kind of intelligence to Quicken would require a massive software development effort, the hiring of a team of AI experts, and new infrastructure for gathering and processing all the data. This just isn't Quicken's area of expertise. I understand the interest in such a tool, but just don't see this as a viable or desirable direction for Quicken.

billc2559

I would like to use ai to generate some reports, ie., compare my travel expenses (from Spending Cloud) for our one to two trips we have taken to Costa Rica every year since 2013. I could create a spreadsheet but that's too much work. Or, generate a report to show household expense categories (by year) with with a line graph and % off total. Basically, create Excel spreadsheets for me.

NotACPA

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20411951#Comment_20411951

You can just export selected Q data to a spreadsheet, and manipulate to your heart's content

Chris_QPW

At this point in time people are giving AI way too much credit for being "intelligent" or "general purpose".

It would almost be like having a built in financial planner analyzing where we could improve on spending (cutback) and how best to invest the savings to achieve goals.

One thing AI can do is search for connections in data, but I think you are way over thinking this in someways, and way underestimating it in other ways.

If you create reminders for everything that you pay for on subscription, and if you pull up a report on your expenses between the two, you should easily be able to see what you are spending on, and it will be up to you what is "could improve on". To one person, X expense might be "I can't live without it." to another "It is I could do without it." At best you would have to tell the AI what is important to you and what isn't. The very act of doing such would already answer the question of what to cut back with the reminders/expense report at hand. This is the one I think you are over thinking.

The second part of what to invest in, well I'm sure everyone in the world would love to have something like that other than what is already there, pretty much cookie cutter answers. No one human or AI knows the future, and as such no one can give that perfect answer of what you should invest in. There are plenty of people/companies that will certainly try to convince you that they can do that for you, but in general nothing in this world is free. If something is truly free you can pretty much figure it isn't worth much. The "payment" might be in you spending a lot of time learning, or it might pay someone else that has done the work.

I think AI is going to do a lot of nice things for the world, (and probably a lot of bad things, especially when it is misused), but this notion that it is a quick way to get an expensive service for basically free isn't going to pan out in my opinion.