About Judy

I didn’t begin my career in finance until I was 40, but I quickly made up for the lost decades. Eight years after I started working as a broker, I co-founded my own firm. In 1994, I was named Los Angeles Entrepreneur of the Year in Financial Service. Because I have a special interest in helping women manage their finances, I launched the Resnick Group in 1998. In 1999, I published a book, “I’ve been Rich, I’ve been Poor. Rich is Better.” I live near Los Angeles.

Those are the kind of facts that you expect to find in an author statement.

They don’t explain why I revised my 1999 book.

This does: “70 Year-Old Grandmother Supports Disabled Daughter and Young Grandkids.”

That could be the headline in any newspaper in America. Across the country, woman are left alone to support their kids. Too often that’s because fathers walk away from their families, taking with them the standard of living their wives and kids used to know.

The choices for those who have been abandoned?

Sometimes the wife — who gets paid 70% of what her husband would have earned in that same job — can support her family.

If there are no resources, the family can get modest assistance from the government.

Or the grandparents can step up, using money saved for retirement.

I’m that grandparent.

My younger daughter — married, with three school-aged children — has long had a debilitating, incapacitating disease. One night, while she was in the hospital, her husband walked out the door and into another woman’s apartment. What he left behind, in addition to his family: a car that was ready to be repossessed and a house on which he owed three months rent. Unsurprisingly, he lost his job and hasn’t worked again.

What would you do?

Exactly: I helped my daughter find great doctors and moved her and her brood — the kids, the dogs and the cat — in with me. Just to make it a real zoo, I added some chickens.

Now I’m the financial rock that holds these lives together. Because I don’t want to burn through savings and my retirement fund, I work.

I’m lucky. I’m successful in a business that pays successful people well. This work is good for my head. It’s better for the cash flow.

But what if I didn’t have savings? What if I didn’t have a way to earn a living? If I hadn’t been insured properly, what would have happened?

My daughter’s experience has seared me — and changed me. In the ’90s, I focused on helping women, but I was happy to invest for men as well. That’s still true, but now I’m obsessed with helping women, especially in financial trouble through no fault of their own.

In my book, I show women who have an income or an inheritance — or even a husband — can find sensible ways to save and invest their money.

That’s not enough for me.

I have a mission.

I want to help women who are alone and struggling to make sense of their finances.

I want to help the grandparents who have had to step up for their abandoned children and grandchildren.

And I especially want to do something about deadbeat dads.

So all profits from this book will go to the Harriett Buhai Center for Family Law, which protects victims of domestic violence and improves the wellbeing of children living in poverty. With the help of volunteers, the Center provides free family law assistance and legal education to the poor, and strives to empower people in need and assure them meaningful access to the courts. For more information, visit http://www.hbcfl.org.