“Beyond those alternatives I don’t have much to offer. Famewolf put out the call months ago. There have not been a great many alternatives suggested.”
That’s your opinion and you came into this already trending against these methods. As @jcohen73 mentioned dividend stocks continue to pay out their consistent dividends. No loss is generated until I choose to sell or the dividend changes. If I die still holding these stocks my beneficiary gets them with a cost basis of the price they were the day I became deceased meaning they don’t have to pay capital gains.
Additionally in the past I mentioned annuities many of which had a 5-6% “guaranteed return” at the time. Those continue to pay out now and in many cases are designed to pay out until you kick the bucket AND have a death benefit equal to at LEAST what you started with. The problem is you needed to invest in those THEN as now the rates offered will be not worth the effort of tying up your funds.
Finally I mentioned peer to peer lending clubs like lendingclub.com. Even after all defaults it produced a 5-6% return on money invested. This is a LONG term investment designed to pay an income. Many people are refinancing debt at this time so it’s certainly a good time to look over the possibilities. I just read an article saying mortgages rates are the HIGHEST they’ve been in quite some time in spite of the market and lowering of interest rates in general.
Ignoring all these the very first thing anyone should be doing now while rates are so low is pay down their OWN debt. Refinance at lower rates. Consolidate if possible. Get rid of those high credit card rates. Pay down the mortgage with extra payments. If you are not retired or going to be retired within 5 years add to retirement funds as much as possible.