Meet the Trader.
My choices in life come with a price tag nobody shows me upfront. If they do show me, I don't always trust the cost and choose anyway.
I had to learn that earlier than most.
My dad left when I was nine. My parents didn't officially divorce until I was thirteen, but life got chaotic fast. My mom held onto our small home in Clarendon Hills, IL, so we could stay in the same schools she and my grandparents attended. She figured it out. So did I — eventually.
I was born with two deformed ankles that never slowed me down until gravity and age conspired for end-stage arthritis in my forties. Severe asthmatic until twelve. Hospitalized for mono in high school. Shingles on my face at seventeen — during the same weeks I was registering for college classes.
I first tasted alcohol at twelve and accelerated that ride about as fast and for as long as you can go. I'll tell you in a future post why and how I finally quit. Because that choice traveled with me for most of my life, I'll weave the cost of that trade throughout my writing.
When your family is struggling to pay bills, you work early and often. My high school guidance counselor told me I wasn't college material. So, I went to state college that let me in on work-study.
Financial chaos at an early age has a way of shaping everything that comes after. The research even has a name for it — the ACE study.
Therapy helps. The real cure is living long enough to process what came before.
I spent a long stretch following a script written for someone else. Moved in with my college boyfriend at nineteen. Married at twenty-three. Two sons before I was twenty-seven. Stayed more than twenty-five years.
In between, I built something.
Picked up a Master's in Financial Planning. Earned a CFP®, AIF, CDFA, and CEPA. Built three small companies — one tax practice, two RIA firms — and sold two the two investment firms. Wrote Love-Jacked! Divorce Your Spouse, Not Your Dollars in 2012 because someone needed to say plainly: the largest financial transaction of most people's lives deserves a financial professional in the room.
I was on CNBC once, interviewed by Sharon Epperson while on my second honeymoon, no less — if you're impressed by that sort of thing. I also served as Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox's retirement planning speaker in her statewide series, Money Counts. I framed the commendation letters. Obviously.
Why mention any of this? Because a whole lot of people's shared expectations had me ending up somewhere considerably worse. The best revenge has been building a life I love while loving others.
The chaos hasn't stopped. It's just controlled now. By me.
Both ankles replaced — one of them twice. Marriage, divorce, remarriage. Fourteen moves as an adult. Building, selling, starting over. Travel late in life. Therapy. Really helpful therapy.
Maybe some of this looks like your life. Maybe none of it does. Either way, every chapter came with a trade. Some I made well. Some I'd do differently.
Each writing I'll share the real stories — from my files and my life — along with the questions I wish more people had asked before they signed, sold, settled, or quit.
That's the Trade. Pull up a chair.
That's the Trade is an independent publication launched in March 2026 by Bonnie Ashby Sewell. If you subscribe today, you'll get full access to the website as well as email newsletters about new content when it's available. Your subscription makes this site possible, and allows That's the Trade to continue to exist. Thank you!