Am I Okay If I Step Away? with Bridget Grimes | Financial Planner Search

<p>In this episode of Financial Planner Search, Bridget Grimes, founder of Wealth Choice, talks about the women who make the money, carry the family, and still do not have five minutes for a plan. The firm is about to turn ten.</p><p>Bridget was a hedge-fund trader, then a pastry chef for a decade. During her divorce, her house in San Diego burned down. Her two closest friends, a hand surgeon and a woman running a media company, lost their houses in the same stretch and were going through divorces too. None of them had a plan. Bridget had let her husband pay the bills. In the divorce she split debt she did not know existed. Her surgeon friend had the water turned off more than once, because there was no time to pay it between the operating room and her son. That is who Wealth Choice is for. Bridget calls them breadwinner women: executives, law-firm partners, founders, and women in tech. They may have a spouse. The weight still sits with them.</p><p>She will not take someone on until she has spent unpaid time on the numbers and on what that woman actually wants her life to look like. A recent client retired at 51 with the money sitting in two companies and no idea where to start. A CEO who had built her company for 25 years got an offer during COVID. Bridget told her to walk away. It was a lot of money. It was not enough, and it would have sold her out of her own identity. Six months later a better offer came. Two years on, she is almost through the earnout, and it took that long to feel okay. Another couple, 71 and 65, could have stopped years ago. They retired in July. The next Monday he missed their meeting because he forgot it was Monday. Bridget’s line is that the question is not “can I afford to retire?” It is “can I retire?”</p><p>Takeaways</p><ul><li>Why a divorce and a house fire sent her back to serve women who look like her</li><li>What it looks like when a successful woman has the money and nowhere to start</li><li>Why she told a CEO to turn down a sale that was still a lot of money</li><li>The gap between being able to afford to stop and being okay with stopping</li><li>Who she refers out: people who want to keep doing it their own way</li></ul><p>Chapters</p><ul><li>00:00 Breadwinner Women</li><li>01:04 The Fire, the Divorce, and No Plan</li><li>05:46 Retired at 51, Money in Two Stocks</li><li>08:29 She Will Not Say Yes on the First Call</li><li>15:03 How She Gets Paid, and Who She Serves</li><li>18:05 Walk Away From the Offer</li><li>23:17 He