Now Available

By Tod Long · Loadstar House

The Income
Standard

How to Engineer Retirement Income You Can't Outlive.

Built from two seasons of The Income Standard podcast — the full framework for building a retirement income floor that holds regardless of what the market does, in one place, cover to cover.

Paperback · $17.99 Hardcover · $24.99 Kindle · $9.99

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What's Inside

Sixteen chapters. Two parts. One standard.

Ghost-polished from two full seasons of the podcast — the scaffolding stripped away, the framework tightened so each chapter builds on the last instead of re-explaining itself.

Part One — The Framework

01The Retirement Trap Nobody Talks About
02Why Your Retirement Number Is the Wrong Number
03The Sequence Nobody Warned You About
04Questions You're Already Asking (Q&A)
05The Longevity Problem Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud
06The Hidden Tax on Your Retirement: Fee Leakage
07RMDs: The Tax Bomb You Can Still Defuse
08"My Advisor Says I'm Fine" (Q&A)

Part Two — Applying the Standard

09The Order Matters: Decumulation Sequencing
10The Social Security Decision You Can't Undo
11The Surviving Spouse Problem
12The Questions That Keep Coming Up (Q&A)
13What an Annuity Actually Is
14Inflation and the Floor
15The Overcautious Retiree
16What All of This Adds Up To (Q&A)

The Blueprint Concept

Engineered. Not guessed. Even the cover says it.

Most retirement books on the shelf look like authority — navy, gold, a serif title, a headshot. This one is built like an actual engineering drawing, because that's the book's real argument: retirement income isn't a number you land on. It's a structure you build, with a floor that holds regardless of what the market does.

  • A technical cross-section diagram of the "income floor" concept — the book's core idea, rendered as an engineering drawing
  • Drafting-style title blocks front and back, like a real architectural signature block
  • Eight chapters include a "Try It Yourself" callout linking to the exact calculator on this site for that chapter's math
  • No author photo — a blueprint doesn't have a headshot on it, and that's the point

"The question isn't whether you have enough. The question is whether what you've built can hold — by contract — regardless of what the market does the year you retire."

Tod Long, author of The Income Standard

About the Author

Tod Long

Retirement Income Architect. Over two decades specializing in what happens after the portfolio stops growing and the income has to start. Licensed in 32+ states, focused exclusively on building income architecture that doesn't depend on probability.

20+
Years in practice
32+
States licensed
1
Standard
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Get Your Copy

Available now, wherever you like to read.

Paperback

$17.99

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Hardcover

$24.99

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Kindle

$9.99

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Not Ready to Buy Yet?

Start with the podcast — it's the same framework, one episode at a time.

Already read the book and want to see where your own plan stands against it? Schedule the Income Standard Review →