🧪 The VIP Retirement Income Lab

You’ve saved $2 million for retirement. Now what? In this episode of The Retirement Income Lab, Patrick Huey, CFP®, answers one of the biggest questions high-saving professionals face:What is the best retirement paycheck strategy if you have $2 million in retirement savings? Because building the portfolio was only part of the job. In this video, we put a real-world retirement income scenario under...

Schedule: www.victoryindependentplanning.com/contact Download the book: https://victoryindependentplanning.com/ (Click on “Download Free Retirement Guide.” Does your financial advisor really suck? Probably not. But the system many advisors work in just might. In this episode of The Retirement Income Lab, Patrick Huey, CFP®, breaks down why so many investors and retirees feel ignored, underserved,...

Risk Capacity vs Risk Tolerance. Are you taking too much risk with your retirement savings… or not enough? If you’re 5 years from retirement (or just into it), you’ve probably heard two opposite pieces of advice:“Play it safe. Move everything to cash or bonds.”“If you don’t stay aggressive, you’ll run out of money.”Both can be wrong. In this episode of The Retirement Income Lab with Patrick Huey,...

If you have a large traditional IRA or 401(k), here’s the uncomfortable truth: Every dollar in that pre‑tax account is NOT really yours. You have a silent partner — the IRS — and you won’t know exactly how big their share is until you start taking withdrawals and Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs). In this episode of The Retirement Income Lab with Patrick Huey, CFP®, we put that relationship un...

Can you really retire at 62 with $1.5 million… and stay retired? In this episode of The Retirement Income Lab with Patrick Huey, CFP®, we put a real‑world scenario under the microscope. Our test couple, “Mark and Lisa,” are both 60, have saved $1.5M in their 401(k)s, IRAs, and brokerage accounts, and want to retire in just two years. They spend about $90,000 per year after taxes and are wondering...

Did you ever notice that saving for retirement and taking money out of your accounts in retirement feel like two completely different games? Most of Wall Street, the financial media, and even many advisors are still playing the first game. Welcome to The VIP Retirement Income Lab. In this channel, we’ll focus on the second game: how to turn your life’s savings into durable, tax‑aware, real‑world i...

Grounded planes. Exploding airships. And your retirement plan is caught in the middle. In this episode of History Lessons for the Modern Investor, we connect two very different stories: Spirit Airlines shutting down overnight in 2026 and the 1937 Hindenburg disaster that turned the “future of travel” into a fireball in under a minute. What do a budget airline and a hydrogen airship have to do with...

What does a Michael Jackson biopic have in common with a nuclear disaster at Chernobyl… and your retirement account? More than you think. In this episode of History Lessons for the Modern Investor, we use two very different stories—Hollywood trying to retell the life of the “King of Pop,” and the Chernobyl meltdown—to unpack real-world investing strategies you can actually use. Here’s what you’ll...

Are your investments ready for the next “earthquake” in the markets? 🌊 📉In this episode of History Lessons for the Modern Investor, we connect two big stories—Japan’s recent earthquake and the Hubble Space Telescope—to show you how to invest through shocks, fix a blurry financial plan, and keep your long‑term goals in focus. What you’ll learn in this episode: 🌊 Segment 1 – Earthquakes, Inflatio...

Did you know there are quiet little rule changes already in place for 2026 that could cost you real money over a 20–30 year retirement—or quietly save you a bundle—depending on how you plan? In this HL4TMI Special Report, I walk through three changes that affect how you save, invest, and take money out in retirement starting in 2026. These aren’t headlines for tax nerds; they’re levers you can pul...

Episode Description: This episode pairs two “traditions unlike any other” – The Masters and Jackie Robinson Day – to ask a simple question: How do you keep playing your long game when the course, the crowd, and the numbers all make you nervous? ⛳ First Word – The Masters & Markets Climbing a Wall of Worry. We start at Augusta: perfect fairways, swirling winds, and golfers trying to survive Amen C...

Artemis is heading back to the moon 🚀 and we’re revisiting the moment the U.S. finally said, “Okay, fine, we’re in” to World War I 🇺🇸—which is basically the perfect combo for how most of us treat our money. In this week’s episode:🌙 First Word – Artemis & Your Portfolio Flight Path Artemis doesn’t launch once and hope for the best. It launches, then makes a thousand tiny course corrections. Inves...

Opening Day Jitters and Near Misses: Baseball, Reagan, and Your MoneyThis episode has two quick innings:⚾ First Word – Opening Day & Overreacting to Game 1We use MLB Opening Day as a lens on the economy: a few shaky early “innings” in the data, some solid contact underneath, and a reminder that you don’t rebuild your entire portfolio based on one month’s box score. Think full season, not first pi...

War with Iran doesn’t feel like just another headline. It feels like a direct threat to your safety, to global stability – and to your portfolio. When markets wobble and oil spikes, it’s easy to think, “This time is different.” In this History Lessons for the Modern Investor special report, we step into the way‑back machine and look at what actually happened to markets during some of the most frig...

In this episode, we mash up two stories to answer one big question: How do you stay invested when the headlines look like an action movie and the deals sound like they’re coming from Vito Corleone? 🥋 First Word: Chuck Norris, the Fed, and a Surprisingly Calm Market. We start with the news of Chuck Norris’s passing and why we secretly love the myth of the invincible hero. Then we contrast that wit...

This episode is peak March: we’ve got busted 2026 brackets, a slower economic “box score,” and one of the wildest art heists in history—all pointing at the same question:How do you protect your financial life when the world loves upsets? Here’s what we dig into: 🏀 First Word – Your Bracket, the Economy, and That Slower GDP Number. Everyone’s a college basketball expert this week… right up until a...

Daylight Saving Time stole an hour of our sleep 😴 and Barbie just turned 67 🎂… which is about as good a summary of markets and money as you’re going to get this week. In the latest episode, we discuss:⏰ Daylight Saving Time– We “spring forward” and feel jet‑lagged for a few days, even though nothing fundamental in our lives changed.– Investors do the same thing with their portfolios: one weird...

🍔Burger King is putting the Whopper in a tuxedo 👔 and Winston Churchill is dropping an “Iron Curtain” 🧱—and yes, they both showed up in the latest episode. Here again, I mash up two very different stories:🍔 Part 1: The Whopper glow‑upBurger King tweaks the bun, upgrades the mayo, and swaps the wrapper for a box. Same patty, better packaging. That’s a perfect metaphor for how most of us should...

So...picture this. You’re at a Northeast airport.🌨️ Snow is piling up on the runway. TSA is short-staffed thanks to the latest funding drama. Flights are delayed, security lines snake past the food court, and every phone refresh brings more bad news. It feels like the entire system is broken. In this short episode, I use that all-too-familiar travel nightmare as a metaphor for how we experience ou...

In a world where everything is live-streamed, even an Olympic skier’s post‑race confession can turn into a global headline in seconds. But what happens when we bring that same “oversharing” impulse to our money? In this episode, I walk through: 🎿What January’s data is really telling us 🎿We start with the skier’s now‑famous on‑camera infidelity announcement—not for the gossip, but for what it say...

Sharp Edges, Surprise Knockouts & Your Money 🏂🥊💰In this episode, we mash up two very different worlds—the Winter Olympics in Milan–Cortina and Buster Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson in 1990—to pull out some practical History Lessons for the Modern Investor. You’ll see how:The economy looks more like a solid Olympic run than a wipeout❄️ Services are still “skating” forward❄️ Manufacturing finall...

When a winter storm rolls in, the world outside can look like pure crisis: whiteouts, closed roads, canceled flights, and “do not travel” warnings everywhere. But inside most homes? The lights are on, the heat works, and life mostly…adjusts. Right now, the economy looks a lot like that. In this week’s episode, we step inside from the blizzard of headlines and look at what’s actually happening unde...

In this episode, I mash up two very different stories with the same lesson: Verizon’s massive “no bars” outage…and the original Gold Rush at Sutter’s Mill. First, we look at how one bad software update turned a highly efficient, centralized network into an instant SOS sign — and what that says about portfolios and retirement plans that rely on a single “carrier”: one stock, one sector, one employe...

This week, we demolished the food pyramid. We grew up with a neat little triangle that promised health… and delivered the opposite. The lesson? It’s not the diagram that matters, it’s the results. In this week's History Lesson for the Modern Investor: On January 15, 2001, Wikipedia went live and quietly changed how we deal with information: from slow, expert-only encyclopedias to a messy, “good en...

The news about Rob Reiner and his wife's tragic passing last week hit a lot of us harder than we expected. For my generation, he wasn’t just “a director.” He was the voice behind the stories we grew up on: The Princess Bride, Stand By Me, When Harry Met Sally… movies you can watch as a kid, rewatch as an adult, and realize you’ve actually been seeing different films each time.👸 The line that’s be...