I’m Marc Lowe, CFP®, Founder of In The Money Retirement Planning.

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At 33, I quit mainstream finance.

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I made that decision because I started to see financial planning differently.

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My mother-in-law passed away at just 59 years old. She worked hard for years, but she never got the chance to experience the retirement she had worked toward.

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That changed the way I thought about money, work, and retirement.

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It made me realize that retirement isn't just about having enough money someday. It's about having the financial freedom to choose how you spend your time while you still have the health and ability to enjoy it.

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That became my mission:

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To help people make work optional as early as possible.

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Not necessarily to stop working. But to get to a point where work becomes a choice—not something you have to do to maintain your lifestyle.

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I Learned This Lesson Before I Became a Financial Planner

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Early in my career, I started a few businesses, including a restaurant business I opened when I was 22.

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I was ambitious, worked hard, and figured I could solve most problems myself.

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The financial advisors I encountered wanted to manage my retirement plan or extend me credit.

But very few were asking about the thing that was actually creating most of my wealth and consuming most of my time:

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My business.

 

I needed someone who could help me think through cash flow, profitability, taxes, debt, risk, systems, and ultimately how the business fit into my personal financial life.

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Instead, I learned many of those lessons the hard way.

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Eventually, the business wore me down and I experienced burnout.

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Looking back, I realized that better financial planning could have helped me make better decisions much earlier.

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That experience became part of the foundation for In The Money Retirement Planning.

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Why I Built In The Money

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Today, I work with business owners and pre-retirees who want to create financial independence and make work optional as early as possible.

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For business owners, that often means helping them:

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• Make better cash-flow decisions.

• Reduce financial risk within the business.

• Manage debt and prepare for difficult periods.

• Reduce their lifetime tax burden.

• Build retirement plans for themselves and their employees.

• Turn business value into personal wealth.

• Prepare for an eventual transition or exit.

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For pre-retirees, the questions are different:

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• When can I afford to stop working?

• How much can I safely spend?

• How do I minimize taxes over my lifetime?

• How should I coordinate Social Security, investments, retirement accounts, and other income sources?

 

And ultimately:

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What would it take to make work optional?

 

That's the question I want every client to be able to answer.

 

My Philosophy

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I believe financial planning should be about more than investment returns.

 

Planning comes first. Investments support the plan.

 

My approach is built around a few simple principles:

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• The goal isn't simply to accumulate more money. It's to create financial freedom.

• Work should be a choice—not something you're forced to continue because you haven't planned properly.

• Your financial life should be coordinated, not managed in separate silos.

• Taxes should be planned for proactively—not simply dealt with when the bill arrives.

• Your business can be one of your greatest assets, but it can also be one of your greatest risks.

• Investment management is only one part of creating financial independence.

• The earlier you know what you're working toward, the more choices you have.

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My Experience

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Before founding In The Money Retirement Planning, I worked at some of the largest financial firms in the country.

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At Fisher Investments, I managed relationships with approximately 200 households and earned the firm's Platinum Investment Counselor award, recognizing top-performing advisors based on client satisfaction and referrals.

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Before Fisher, I worked with Charles Schwab's Advisory Services platform and in private wealth management at Spartan Capital.

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Those experiences gave me a deep understanding of investment management and retirement planning—but they also showed me the limitations of a financial system that can sometimes focus more on managing investments than helping people determine what their money is actually supposed to accomplish.

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So I built something different.

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My goal isn't to help you work until 65, 70, or whatever arbitrary age someone says you should retire. My goal is to help you build a financial plan that gives you the freedom to make work optional as early as possible.

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Because you never know how much time you'll have.

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And I believe your financial plan should account for that.