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EFrances@lemmy.eco.br 2 weeks agoWould you give some examples of bonds that you’re talking about (rather than bond funds)? I’m thinking you mean something from Treasury Direct: Treasury bonds (T-bonds), Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS) and/or I bonds.
tburkhol@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Treasuries are nice because they’re convenient and low buy-in, but their yields are crap, sometimes a little above inflation, sometimes below. TIPS are a decent way to hedge the inflation risk, but (IMO) it’s still really for people who are more worried about losing their savings than living off it. (i.e.: if you have, say, $1e8, you can live pretty comfortably off $1e6, even $1e5 in a lean year, so your rate of return doesn’t really matter)
For me, personally, the limited bond exposure I have is all corporate and mostly junk, bought through my broker in the secondary market, with maturity 10-20 years out. Until fairly recently, junk bonds were the only way to get yields above 4%, and that’s kind of my mental benchmark for gaining relative to inflation. One downside of corporate bonds is they generally have a $10k minimum.