The Case for Fixed Income
From: Sound Income Strategies, LLC
Renewable Income Streams to Keep You a Step Ahead of Inflation
- Why now is still a good time to buy and hold bonds
- What if I invest today and rates go up tomorrow?
- How to create a steady stream of income you can count on well into retirement
Renewable Resource — A natural resource that can replenish itself naturally over time.
We hear the term “renewable resource” used often when referring to energy—solar, wind, and even tidal energy. Most agree that the practical use of renewable energy is essential for our future well-being. The same can be said for money, investing, and retirement. By planning ahead, Americans born in or before 1966—The Income Generation—can help to ensure they do not run out of money in their golden years.
By placing a large part of their portfolio in fixed-income securities, members of The Income Generation can establish a renewable source of income they can count on throughout retire-ment while preserving the value of their original investment.
As life expectancy continues to increase, it becomes imperative for anyone over the age of 50 to establish their own renewable stream of income to cover their living expenses throughout retirement.
If you haven’t been able to save enough money to live off of in retirement, this could be the solution you’ve been waiting for.
By preserving your principal and using it to create a lasting flow of income instead of spending it, you can help to ensure that your money will last for 30 years or more in retirement. As long as your principal is left intact, you’ll have an income stream.
Investing in Stocks Has Always Been a Gamble
Throughout adulthood, most of us were conditioned to believe the best way to ensure a better financial future was through stocks. The argument was that stocks always go up in the long-term. And that is true, but stocks also go down. And, if you’re within 10 to 15 years from retire-ment and your portfolio is decimated by a 20%-30% correction, the results could be disastrous.
Investing in stocks has always been a gamble with a similar likelihood of ending in a win or a loss, depending on your timing. It almost seems like every time the stock market increases enough to feel good about your broker statement, the gains quickly evaporate in a gut-wrench-ing plunge.
Unfortunately, those who are part of The Income Generation—people born in or before 1966—don’t have decades to ride out another 20%-30% drop in stock prices to regain the losses to their portfolios. Even if stock prices eventually go back up to where they were, it’s not something investors can rely on with any level of certainty.
What If You Like to Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch?
There have always been more conservative savers who feel more comfortable knowing exact-ly what their investments will provide for them in the future. These people like to count their chickens before they’ve hatched. In this way, they can know what they have to work with and avoid a lot of unnecessary stress.
These conservative savers are interest rate investors who mostly place money in U.S. savings bonds or bank certificates of deposit (CDs). In recent years, the low-interest-rate environment we’ve seen in CDs and U.S. government bonds has left many missing their income goals.
This is where Sound Income Strategies has become a popular answer to the perplexing question of what to invest in. This is especially true for investors who can’t or won’t settle for the uncertainty of the stock market but know that earning less than the inflation rate in CDs can turn out to be disastrous to their portfolios and retirement dreams.
The methods used by the experts at Sound Income Strategies involve higher-yielding invest-ments that allow you to count your chickens before they’ve hatched. They provide sustainable income solutions that won’t have you cannibalizing the principal balance of your investments.
Instead, you can place your hard-earned savings in investment vehicles that generate consis-tent streams of income while guaranteeing the return of your original principal.
The universe of investment-grade income-producing investments is much larger than the stock market and much more diverse than bank deposits or U.S. Treasury bonds. In fact, building a portfolio with securities yielding 5%-6% puts you well ahead of today’s inflation rate and close to what the stock market eventually averages without the stress and aggravation that come with the ups and downs of the stock market.
