Getting to the right page faster
I didn't use AI to decide what to do with my pension or mortgage. It just got me to a decision much faster.
I have been avoiding making a decision on what to do with a couple of pensions for over a year, cue Claude.
Over the last six months I have reworked the pension, worked out what we could sensibly borrow on a mortgage, and modelled the next ten years in more ways than I would ever have had the patience to on my own. The decisions were mine either way. What has changed is the time it took to get to them, and how many angles I looked at along the way.
For me, Claude has been a welcome companion to plan and execute decisions, but very much as a research tool. It’s got me reading the right articles and perspectives quicker, the guidance has still come from a trusted source or opinion I respect.
It’s also been incredibly useful to build a simple modelling tool for mortgages. Yes, I know plenty exist, but having a dashboard linked up to a Google Sheet that runs various scenarios specific to me has allowed me to quickly model a number of scenarios. Again, I am not taking its advice at face value, I am using it as a tool to support my own thinking and decisions.
Every one of those decisions was mine, and that was never really in question. A model can tell you what a fixed rate costs over five years, it has no idea how you’ll feel if rates drop in year two, how much risk your household can live with, or what you are actually saving for. Those bits were always on me, and I probably spent more time on them this year than I used to, because the legwork that used to eat all my time had shrunk.
I don’t know yet whether I have called any of it right. Ten years is a long time, and a model is only as good as what you feed it. What I do know is I made the calls with a wider view and better sources than I would have found on my own, and in a fraction of the time.
It’s the same test I use when a business asks me where AI fits for them: does it get people to the right information quicker, and does the decision stay with whoever has to live with it. That’s the thinking behind our work on AI for judgement.