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From Digital 401(k) to Trusted AI Advisor

How 3Nickels Is Redefining Financial Management—Again

Financial Wellness

Reading Time: 5 minutes

By Jason Sheffield

The conversation we needed to have

A recent article Financial Wellness Is Watching You—and That’s Not Always a Bad Thing applauded workplace financial wellness programs for being genuinely useful while acknowledging that many are, ultimately, sales engines. They detect life events (like a divorce, caregiving, or a change to your 401(k)) and offer targeted help right before suggesting a product. Helpful? Maybe. Fully aligned with your best interests? Probably not always because they’re not obligated to be.

At 3Nickels, we agree on two things:

  1. Guidance through life’s biggest milestones is essential.
  2. Guidance becomes objective advice only when it’s accountable.

This is the gap we’ve spent decades closing. We helped pioneer digital 401(k) experiences under a fiduciary standard. Now we’re extending that standard into the next era with our trusted AI Advisor—built so that your interests come first, every time.1

What the article gets right. What it misses.

Right

People need timely, contextual guidance when life changes.
Getting “unstuck” on benefits, paperwork, and next steps builds trust.

Missing

Most programs are not fiduciaries—they’re not legally required to put your interests ahead of their own revenue. Fiduciaries are accountable.
Sales incentives can shape which “solutions” you hear about and when.
Families need a whole-household lens and a repeatable decision framework, not episodic nudges toward products.

Our stance: Education and access are great. Alignment is better. Fiduciary responsibility is the alignment that makes advice reliable, especially when money meets life.

Our track record: building trust before it was trendy

Long before “AI” was a thing, our team helped bring digital AI 401(k) advisory solutions to millions of workers through employer plans and advisory partners under a fiduciary standard. That heritage matters. It means our default setting comes with a duty of care.

Is AI trustworthy? Real world evaluation before evals

That’s a great question — and the honest answer is yes and no.

AI is, at its core, a move toward computational reasoning, making computers more like humans. And just like the human mind, what you put in shapes the reliability of what you get out. In other words: garbage in, garbage out. If the data going into an AI system is biased or unreliable, the output will be too.

That’s why evaluation matters. For more than 25 years, our team at GuidedChoice has been evaluating, refining and evaluating our advisory practices on real ground truth data and market-tested insights, not guesswork or internet noise. The same foundation powers 3Nickels. We were doing real world evaluation before AI agents needed evals.

Our platform logic comes from experts with decades of financial planning and portfolio management experience. We’ve built our product on a quarter-century of market insight, real outcomes, and human expertise, so every recommendation begins with the robustness of sound fundamentals and proven guidance.

We believe the safest trustworthy AI finds the balance of AI precision and speed and human experts as the judge. Together, they form a system that learns efficiently but never loses sight of what matters most: people.

In short: AI can be trustworthy — when it’s built on ground truth, tested over time, and guided by values that put people first.

Meet your new 3Nickels AI Advisor

What it is: An advice engine that pairs financial expertise with AI to deliver objective, personalized and situational advice—without an agenda.

What makes it different:

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Fiduciary policy: Every recommendation is checked against policies designed to prioritize the client’s best interest (cost, suitability, risk, and alternatives).
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Conflicts-out by design: No hidden cross-sell or affiliate kickbacks steering the outcome.
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Transparent “why”: Each suggestion shows the reasoning, trade-offs, fees, and viable alternatives—so you stay in control.
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Human in the loop: Access to a coach or advisor when you need it; AI handles the routine, humans handle nuance.
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Privacy-first architecture: We minimize, encrypt, and compartmentalize data; you control connections and consent.
Real life, not product funnels
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Divorce: Instead of pitching products, we help you sequence: inventory accounts, update beneficiaries, understand QDRO implications, model cash flow, and pick reversible steps first.
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Job change: Rather than “roll it here,” we compare rollover paths (stay, roll to IRA, roll to new plan), reveal fees, employer matches, and portability.
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Caregiving: No upsell to long-term care products. Start with benefits you already have, budget impacts, and an action plan you can adjust.
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Retirement spenddown 2: Instead of pushing annuities, we model them, provide safe withdrawal rates, tax efficient order of accounts (taxable, tax deferred, Roth) and options to eliminate longevity risk

In each case, the Advisor shows options, not ultimatums—and the “why” behind every path.

A standard we invite the industry to adopt
If financial wellness is truly about wellness, then let’s normalize:
Advice vs. sales labels on every touchpoint.
A visible “Why this, why now?” rationale for each recommendation.
A short list of alternatives with cost and risk comparisons.
Audit trails for advice changes over time.
A human-assist pathway for complex trade-offs and emotions.

We’ve built 3Nickels to run on these guardrails. We hope others will, too.

Transparency you can feel

Our commitments:

We aim to present all reasonable alternatives so you can make informed choices.
We do not hide compensation structures or steer you toward products for our benefit.

Our approach:

We explain trade-offs in clear, plain language.
We highlight total cost and risk before you make a decision.
We encourage seeking additional perspectives when the stakes are high.
Why fiduciary AI matters now

AI is making advice more accessible. But accessibility without alignment can lead to misdirection. The future isn’t AI that sells. It’s AI that serves—anchored in fiduciary duty, measured by outcomes that matter to real people and accountable to transparent standards.

We’ve done this before with digital 401(k). We’re doing it again with our AI, 3Nickels, The Financial Advisor In Your Pocket®.

An invitation

If you’ve ever wondered whether “advice” was actually a pitch, try the other path.

3Nickels: Advice Without the Agenda.

Use the app to map your situation, compare your options, and understand the “why”—with a fiduciary standard at its foundation.

Disclosure: This article is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, or investment advice. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

1 “Trusted AI Advisor” refers to 3Nickels’ knowledge of publication and to our definition of an AI advisor as an automated guidance engine governed by fiduciary policies, human-review pathways, and documented best-interest checks.
2 Currently part of our GuidedChoice retirement solutions
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