AI could revolutionise your retirement. But don’t fall for this trap

June 27, 2026 — 5:01am

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Retirement planning is undergoing a powerful revolution driven by AI, and not just in the office of financial advisers, who are adopting it to speed up their businesses and improve their margins. It’s happening around the kitchen table, on the couch late at night, and in bed too.

More than 65 per cent of retirees in my community admitted this week to using it to ask questions, and 38 per cent admit they’ve used it to ask questions and run calculations.

Those two numbers tell us all something important: that people are hungry for accessible, affordable and helpful answers, and they’re going to find ways to get them with or without the industry’s blessing.

The financial services industry has not entirely welcomed this shift. If you’ve spent any time in adviser circles, you’ll sense why: for the first time, the knowledge gap that made professional advice feel essential for people with relatively straightforward situations is starting to close.

AI is, in my opinion, the best thing to happen to retirement planning in 20 years. It’s the only tool I’ve ever seen that has managed to engage everyday people to explore their money keenly, in an easy-to-use, curious manner.

So I’m going to say what many won’t – and that is every Australian heading toward retirement should have AI open on their phone right now, asking it the questions that the system has made it too expensive, too scary and too difficult to answer.

AI is not a replacement for learning how things work from valuable factually correct sources that are trustworthy.

You should ask it how stuff works. Ask it to explain compound interest and inflation until it finally makes sense to you. You should get it to explain the different ways of calculating how much you need and how well your money will last.

And you should ask the questions you’ve been too embarrassed to ask your super fund about whether you’re likely to be eligible for the age pension,........

© The Age