Data: Americans Are Using Chatbots for Financial Advice. Risky or Rewarding?

Key Findings

• — 26% of US adults have used an AI chatbot for personal-finance questions, and 49% of those users did so in the past week.
• — 27% of chatbot finance users have acted on the advice; of those, 29% say it hurt their financial situation and 39% say it helped.
• — 20% of those who acted did so right away, without follow-up questions, further research or human input; 9% talked to a financial advisor first.
• — 28% of users cite wanting a non-judgmental response and 12% say they were embarrassed to ask a real person.
• — 77% of users have shared some personal information with a chatbot, including Social Security numbers (9%) and account numbers (10%); 14% followed a chatbot-provided link that seemed suspicious or misleading.

Methodology Notes

Harris Poll online survey for NerdWallet, 23-24 June 2026, n=2,003 US adults aged 18 and over, of whom 496 had used a chatbot for finance questions; Harris reports a Bayesian credible interval rather than a margin of error. The harm figure rests on the subset who acted on advice, so it is imprecise. Commercial publisher; outcomes are self-reported. Page datePublished 2026-07-22. Syndicated TV coverage on 2026-09-28 surfaced it. Verified by fetching the NerdWallet page (HTTP 200); methodology paragraph and the 29% figure read.

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