I can't find any Vanguard funds in which to invest my IRA!

[JohnSwanson]

For those of you who aren't following my saga, my attempt to use nearly all of my 401K balance to purchase an
Integrity Insurance fixed annuity was rejected by the insurer because they want me to use 38% less of my assets.
This means that I have to find a way to invest a large chunk of money in investments that will actually make
money, which is what I was trying to avoid doing in the first place!

I wrote a Linux shell script that simulates the performance of a portfolio that yields a fixed annual income, while
a fixed monthly amount is being withdrawn. From this I learned that, if I can find a way to invest my IRA that
yields only 2%/year, it's likely that my IRA will last as long as I will! Although 2% doesn't sound like much, it is
when you calculate the returns of the stock market indexes since 1/1/2000! In addition, now that bonds are
no longer a safe-haven, this makes it even more difficult for me to choose investments!

Since I've rolled-over nearly everything into my Vanguard IRA, I've been researching the Vanguard investment
choices on their website:

https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-fu ... nd-returns

My criteria is, simply, that the funds I invest-in be in-the-black for the past 12 months and my portfolio needs to
earn 2%/year. This eliminates all of the stock mutual funds and blended investments. Although many of the
Vanguard bond funds look promising on their web page, the yields shown are a statistical fluke! I enter the ticker
symbol for the fund on Yahoo Finance and look at the long-term price chart. For every bond fund that I've done
this for, the price is at, or near, the highest that this fund has ever reached. From this I conclude that it's
unlikely that the fund will continue to grow in value in today's rising interest rate environment! Does my reasoning
sound reasonable to you?

I haven't purchased the annuity yet because I believe that finding a way to invest my IRA is as important as
the income from the annuity! Does anybody have any suggestions?

Thanks!
John

[JohnSwanson]

Until yesterday, I didn't pay any attention to the ETFs tab on Vanguard's mutual funds web page. I found two
sector ETFs that are in the black for the past year! One of these is the Consumers Staples ETF (ticker: vdc)
that earned 11% for the past year. I'm surprised that the second fund is the Telecommunication Services ETF
(ticker: vox) that earned nearly 8%! For what it's worth, both of these funds have a Morningstar 4 star rating.

Although I found several bond ETFs that look promising, the price chart on Yahoo Finance for each of these
funds shows that the fund is at or, near, the fund's all-time high, just like all of the other Vanguard bond funds
that I've researched. Therefore, I don't think that these funds can continue earning money in a rising interest
rate environment!

Although I prefer having a better-diversified portfolio, I'm thinking about investing my IRA equally in vdc, vox,
and a money market fund. Since I don't need to tap my IRA until over 2 years from now, I'm going to wait
for the stock market to crash really hard before I purchase vdc and vox! Of course, if these investments don't
work-out, I can try something else! Does anybody else think that it's scary that it's so difficult to find funds to
invest-in today?

FYI,
John

[arrakeen]

Just a comment from left field. AT&T has had 35 years of consistent dividends (never decreasing - sometimes increasing) and at today's stock price ~37.40 the current dividend (1.92/yr) provides a 5.1% return on your investment. So regardless of how the stock price may fluctuate your yield is based on what you paid for the stock. As an example if you bought 10,000 shares of stock you would get $19,200 in yearly dividends. Considering the history of AT&T since 1985 and all the changes and breakups/mergers it has gone through it is pretty amazing that the stock dividends have remained so steady. As a very conservative company it has managed to evolve and survive quite well. Obviously all investments have risks and there is no guarantee of dividends but history has been very kind to many retirees who have been able to live comfortably with that kind of return. And they did not have to sell any shares of stock to get that return.

[mdtu]

This is my free biotech investing service

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Since I got laid off in 2003 with 20 years, I took a lump sum pay out on my pension. I have been
investing in biotech ever since and got good result from learning/copying others from the Internet