Municipal Bond Funds - Managing Interest Rate Increases

In the past, I have avoided bond funds since the principal will fall when interest rate increases happen. With an individual bond, the principal can be recovered if I don't sell and hold until maturity.  This is not the case with a bond mutual fund, which is continuous and never completely matures. Thus, I will take a loss on principal invested if I sell while interest rates are higher than when I made the original investment

However, since my strategy is now creating a retirement paycheck instead delivering growth in principal, I discovered at tax benefit hack from a municipal bond fund principal declining due to interest rates rising.

Disclaimer:  I haven't had this idea financially analyzed by an "expert."  This is based on my own experience and evaluation.  I have only had experience over the past year, which has not experienced a significant decline for a long period.

Here's the how I evaluated:

1. Judge the result mainly based on income generated for a consistent "retirement paycheck" and not on growth or decrease of principal.  I assume that the income remains constant when interest rates rise, due to reinvestment.  I assume that income declines when interest rates fall due to reinvestment
2. I assume that the bond principal falls when interest rates rise and the principal rises with interest rates fall.

Here's the process for when interest rates are rising:

1. Do tax loss harvesting of the position.  Avoid a wash sale by ensuring 30 days between the sale and purchase of the same security.  While most people sell first and buy back later, I chose to buy first and sell later.  This is worked well since most times, my purchase was near a short term bottom.
2. Maintain the same amount of shares in the positions.  This ensures that the interest payment per month continues to be about the same, which is important for my retirement paycheck strategy.
3. Use the loss on the municipal bond fund to offset realized gains in other positions, or take up the a $3000 capital loss deduction against other income.

In the 12 months I've been doing this, I reduced my capital gains income by 64% in 2025, resulting in significant tax savings, while still received the same amount of total interest and dividend income . I expect to take a $3000 capital loss in 2026 that will reduce my taxable income by that amount.

What about the principal value falling?  Does that concern me?  Not yet, since I expect to get about the same amount of "retirement paycheck" each month.   An analogy would be the value of my home.  I don't worry about the estimated value of the house going down (or up) due to price volatility, as long as I am living in the home.

Will it  concern me in the future?   Only if there is a significant collapse of the U.S. economy.  However, for typical recessions and bear markets, probably not.  We shall see when one occurs.

Of course, YMMV.

Note: The effect and strategy for interest rates falling is not discussed in the post, but will reviewed in a future post.

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This is not financial, investment, retirement nor tax advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2026 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Oh No, I Felt Brilliant This Week

Through Thursday this week, 90% of my buy the dip stocks went up, and sometimes by a lot.   Many of my long term "loser" stocks in a separate account also went up this week, with a few becoming profitable, which I quickly sold for small profit.

This week was exciting, enjoyable and very low anxiety.   However, although I felt brilliant, I know the results were too good to be true.  It really is just a great, outstanding, maybe even once in a lifetime bull market.  It works until it doesn't, which is why I'm sticking to my plan, and avoiding being greedy.

Here's the plan I'm continuing:

• Build and maintain a "retirement paycheck" through dividends from stocks and interest from fixed income.
• Simplify stock holdings by reducing individual stock holding and increasing broad market fund holdings.  Sell some positions for tax loss harvesting.
• Continue to hodl "buy the dip" SAAS stock with a target until midterms.   
• Stop buying stocks during a market dip.
• Scale into high interest rate treasuries on bond mutual funds since interest rates may go up.

Most of all avoid being greedy when selling stocks.  I kept this in mind as I reduced our stock holdings; I did not try to extract the last cent from selling. Sell, simply and feel good is my new mantra when simplifying.

Edit:  My positions held up until Friday's close. Woohoo!

For more on Reaping the Rewards, check back every Friday for a new segment.

This is not financial, stock investment, stock selling nor fixed income advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2026 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Stock Market Warning Articles. What to Do?

Pundits are highlighting the Schiller P/E as an indicator of a near term market top followed by a bear market.  This article from Yahoo Finance shows the Schiller P/E at the second highest level with the 2000 dot-com crash being the highest.

This stock market indicator just flashed a warning not seen since the dot-com bubble

The Motley Fool warns that margin debt is also indicating a possible top followed by a bear market based on recent history.

The Stock Market Is Doing Something Observed Only 4 Times Since 1997 -- and the Previous 3 Instances Ended in Disaster for Wall Street | The Motley Fool

Here's a new one that I just learned about: increasing corporate bankruptcies and private credit yield spreads.

An economist who studies financial crises says the US is on the brink of recession. These are the 2 warning signs.

I admit, when I was younger, I used to worry a lot about another 1929 crash occurring.   As a result, I often sold my winners for a small profit, especially since individual stocks would have high volatility in a crash, sometimes with the result of never recovering.  As a result, my returns are much less than the the total market returns.

What is an investor to do?

In hindsight, here's what I would do:

• In my 20-30s, I would put at least $159 per month into a broad market, low fee mutual fund (around 0.1% or less fees).   I would do an S&P 500 mutual fund.   I would just hold until my 60s, before withdrawing or selling any funds at which point the account would be about $1 million.  In the long term, the overall stock market always goes up.
• When bonds or CDs are 5% yields or higher,  I would start buying longer term, say 5-20 years and hold.   If in a taxable account, I would withdraw the interest earned and spend, since I am already paying income tax on the interest.  If in a tax advantaged account, I would leave and use to invest in a broad market mutual fund.
• I would save 6 months to 3 years of cash and keep it in a money market fund.
• In my 40s-50s, I would start increasing funds put in fixed income.   I would still not sell any of the equity mutual fund investments.
• Retired and/or in my 60s-70s, I would start scaling out of some of individual stocks and/or market mutual fund while going up or very high.  Transfer to money market or short term fixed income.
  

I think there is a future opportunity to find a sweet spot for percentages to have, sell or transfer at different times.  But that is for another future TBD post.

Of course, YMMV.

Disclosure: I did not receive any compensation from Yahoo Finance nor The Motley Fool for this post.

For more on Crossing Generations, check back every Thursday for a new segment.

This is not financial, stock investment nor investment timing advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2026 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Municipal Bond Funds Become Higher Risk

Since buying into muni ETFs (in late 2025) and muni mutual funds (early to mid 2026), they have been relatively stable despite all the volatility this in 2026.  This gave me confidence that this was a good investment option for my retirement paycheck strategy, even though the strategy targeted for consistent payments and not consistent principal.   However, this strategy still needs to experience a market downturn prove its value.

In recent back testing, I discovered that while the principal was relatively constant in the 2008 downturn, the principal fell significantly in the 2022 bear market.   Why the difference?  My conclusion is interest rates decreased in the 2008 recession, while interest rates and inflation increased in the 2002 bear market.

Bond prices go in the opposite direction of interest rates and hence the difference between the two years.

At this point, it appears interest rates are more likely to go higher than lower, resulting in more downward pressure and volatility on bond and bond fund prices.  If this happens, this will be a real time test of the retirement paycheck strategy, which tries to maintain consistent payments even if the principal declines.

At the same time, I can put more money into bonds and bond funds with higher interest rates.  However, I will be scaling in for the possibility the interest rates will increase over a year or more.

For more on  The Practice of Personal Finance, check back every Wednesday for a new segment.

This is not financial, investment, nor bond advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2026 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Expecting Higher Long Term Interest Rates

Recently, I was thinking that buying 20 year treasuries yielding 5% was a good option to lock in a good interest rate.  After TLT, the 20+ year treasury ETF, was at it's all time low.    However, TLT was initiated in 2002.   I decided to look back further on 20 year and the interest rate hit 15.8% in 1981. Yikes, maybe 5% is that great of an option based on long term data.

Source:  https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS20#

With the uncertainty of oil prices and inflation, which both have a high probability of going higher, I stopped buying 20 year treasuries and TLT for now.  For now, I will short term money market funds to earn interest.

Will interest rates go higher?   We shall see.

For more on Ideas You Can Use, check back every Tuesday for a new segment.

This is not financial, investment, bond, nor interest rate advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2026 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Buying Treasuries not CDs

For my fixed income bonds, I'm buying Treasuries, not CDs, to lock in 5% rate for longer terms.   Simply, Treasuries guarantee paying the same coupon rate until maturities.   Most, if not all, long term CDs are callable, meaning if interest rates fall, the bank will terminate the CD early.   Call dates are as little as 3 months to one year in the future for 10 year CDs.   So if interest rates drop, that will be the end of one's CD.

Coupon rates of 5% for Treasuries have historically be high and therefore, attractive.   Of course, interest rates may rise further, but I don't expect them to stay high for long.   Also, I wouldn't mind buying some Treasuries at 6 or 7% yield if that should happen.

To address the risk of rising interest rates, I'm scaling in over the year when buying Treasuries, instead of committing all of the funds in a single purchase.  That way, if interest rates should rise, I will still have funds to invest in bonds.   If interest should fall, I will have locked in at least 5% for part of my fixed income funds.

For more on Strategies and Plans Ideas , check back every Monday Saturday Sunday for a new segment.

This is not financial, bond investment, nor investment advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2026 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Fixed Income Principal Declining Not Worrying...Yet

With the increase in long term interest rates, my bonds, CDs and bond mutual funds have been declining in value. As result, the value of my portfolios are stagnant or declining.  This doesn't worry me yet.   

Why not?

My fixed income investments are expected to deliver relatively stable annual income, even if the market declines, at least theoretically.   I haven't been through a major decline since implementing this strategy.

This may be the first real time test of my "retirement paycheck" strategy.

Will the strategy deliver?   We share see in the monthly payments continue to hold or not in the next few months.

For more on Reaping the Rewards, check back every Friday for a new segment.

This is not financial nor fixed income advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2026 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Is It Time to Add More Fixed Income?

Back in 2021, I bought a CD paying 1% because I agreed with Bernanke when he said interest rates would never be high again in his lifetime.  Well, Ben is still alive and interest rates are now up to 5%.   My 2021 CD matures this year and I can reinvest it.

Historically, 5% has been a very good long term interest rate.  I've already put some funds into the 20 year treasury bond yielding a little over 5%.   I will wait to see how interest rates move before making our next bond investments.

For more on  Strategy and Plans, check back every  Monday for a new segment.

This is not financial, fixed income nor investment advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2026 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

These are Scary Times for the Stock Market

I have been in the stock market since 1980.    TBH, I have always feared a crash like 1929 that started the Great Recession.  That fear has kept me from  being fully invested. 

I have been through several bear markets and short term crashes, each time fearing it would become 1929 again:  1987, 2002, 2008, 2020 and recently 2022.   With each decline/crash, I had great anxiety caused by losing significant invested funds.

Right now, I still think there is reason for caution, as shown by the Buffet Indicator, the Case-Shiller Index the AI bubble stocks.  However, I'm not as anxious as much as before, due to investments in "safer" fixed income options, such as CDs, Treasuries, and Municipal bond funds.  I expect these to help me ride out any significant crash or bear market, until it recovers.   In addition, I have some cash set aside to put in the market if it falls.  I haven't had this cash cushion in previous declines.

Of course, how I weather the next decline is theoretical since the strategy hasn't been tested in a downturn yet.   As Yogi Berra said, "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.  In practice, there is."  

We shall see.

For more on Crossing Generations, check back every Thursday for a new segment.

This is not financial nor investment advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2026 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Holding Off Buying More Fixed Income for Now

Arrrgh!  Interest rates are going up.  Recently, I've been buying 20 year Treasuries which are yielding 5%.   I've been scaling in just in case interest rise.

I'm going to stop buying the 20 year Treasury for now and wait for interest rates to be close to 5.5% before resuming.  I will also stop buying municipal bond funds at this time due to interest rates rising.

However, this will be a good test of my current strategy of creating a retirement paycheck and being agnostic to stock market and interest rate volatility.  We'll see how the strategy weathers this event.

Of course, it works until it doesn't and YMMV.

For more on  Ideas You Can Use, check back every Tuesday  for a new segment.

This is not financial, investment, nor fixed income advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2026 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Locking In Higher Interest Rates to Help our Retirement

When I started working in the 1980s, I calculated that I could retire on $1 million invested at 5% interest.  After all, that was 150% of my starting salary.  Of course, interest rates even went higher, making a million dollars a good goal.

From 2009 to 1019, it looked like retirement was going to require significant more investment funds, when interest rates dropped below 0.5% for CDs.   Then having a million dollars didn't look so good as a retirement plan since it would only yield less than $5,000 per year.   The path to retirement looked dismal.

Then in 2019 interest rates starting rising, with rates peaking in 2023 to 2025 at about 5%.   that means a million dollars now yield $50,000 per year instead of only $5,000.   It also means less retirement savings is needed to retire comfortably.

While interest rates may still go up, I'm locking in 4-5% interest rates on part of our savings for 10-20 years through Treasury bonds and CDs.   Yes, interest rates rising and inflation are a risk, but the bigger risk for us is interest rates going back to 1% or less for an extended period.

Here's my simple logic.  If rates go up, I can always reinvest maturing bonds at the higher rate.   If rates go down, I have to reinvest as at a lower rate, which makes this the higher risk option. So I am scaling in to long term fixed rated bonds and CDs over the next few weeks and months.

For more on  Reflections and Musings,  check back every Friday for a new segment.

This is not financial nor investment advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2026 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

20 Year Treasury Yielding 5%

I'm buying the 20 year Treasury since it's yielding 5%.  Yeah, there are risks with locking up money that long.  Inflation could increase significantly.  The U.S. government could default. 

A worst scenario for our retirement is the 20 year Treasury yield goes down for a long period to 1% as it did in 2020, or hovers around 2.5% as it did from  2012 to 2019.   That would reduce our retirement income significantly.

I am ok with the risk that interest rates go up, even if it is to 7-10%, since I don't think it would be more than for a couple years, which is survivable.  And we would still have some cash to invest at those higher rates.

For more on Strategies and Plans, check back every Monday  for a new segment.

This is not financial, investment nor fixed income advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2026 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Investment Plan for Tomorrow

The only thing that seems likely is that interest rates are inching up.   My plan to start scaling into fixed income, CDs and Treasuries starting tomorrow.  I expect I will be able to lock in 4% or a little higher for 5 and 10 year maturities.  

I plan to only put 5-10%% of the funds in at this time.  That way if interest rates keep rising, I can lock in even higher rates.

For more on  The Practice of Personal Finance, check back every Wednesday for a new segment.

This is not financial, fixed income, nor investment advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2026 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Automating Investing for Growth and Income

My plan for managing our investments in retirement keeps evolving.   My initial approach was to simplify our investments by:

• Selling most individual stocks, but doing so in a tax efficient way and waiting for some postions to become profitable.
• Moving from stock investments to market index mutual funds or ETFs.
• Moving from bond/CD investments to mutual funds or ETFs.
• Automatically withdraw interest and dividend income from taxable accounts.  

I implemented the automatic withdrawal of interest and dividends right away, and that part has worked out well.  In the first week of the month, we receive all the interest and dividends from our taxable account.  This distribution is about 50% of our monthly income.

Otherwise, the process has been slow.  Some of my stock positions have large gains, and it would be not tax efficient to sell them yet.   Some of my losses are in tax advantaged accounts and there is no tax benefit to selling them right away when there is a chance of recovering and become profitable, even though a small chance. I'm slowly moving into bond mutual funds, mostly municipal bond fund so far.  On the other hand, I hold some 10 to 15 year treasuries and agency bonds that I prefer to hold to maturity instead of selling and converting to a bond mutual fund.

Then again, it's tough to give up old habits which caused a distraction in February 2026 when I bought the dip on SAAS software stocks.   It gives me some excitement, entertainment and fun, but I need to restrict do this much less in the future

Finally, I decided to investigate a slightly different approach.   Schwab offers a robotic investment feature called Schwab Intelligent Portfolios.  It seems to offer an investment platform that meets my criteria for being  perpetually very low involvement and automatically adaptive.  This might be what I'm looking for when I am no longer interested nor able to manage our investments.  I've decided to open three Intelligent Portfolio strategies and evaluate if the platform will meet my needs.

Disclosure:  I was not compensated by Schwab for writing this post.

For more on Strategies and Plans, check back every Monday for a new segment.

This is not financial advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2026 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Changing to ETFs for Fixed Income

I've been purchasing the bond ETFs in different accounts over the past couple weeks.   Although too short to really tell yet, I think the decision has been a good one.  Since interest rates appear to be declining, the bonds have been stable or slightly up, even after going ex-dividend. 

For now, I'm going to hold on purchasing any more bonds and wait to see how the government shutdown affects the rates.    If the EFT prices increase, I will just hold. If the ETF prices drop, I will consider buying more.   In either case, I will be getting a monthly interest dividend which will contribute to our retirement paycheck.

For more specifics on the bonds see Evaluating Owning Bond ETFs

For more details on a retirement paycheck see Creating a Retirement "Paycheck."

For more on Strategies and Plans Ideas , check back every Monday for a new segment.

This is not financial nor investing advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2025 Achievement Catalyst, LLC

Evaluating Owning Bond ETFs

Typically, I have been buying fixed income bonds and CDs and hold until maturity to receive the original principal.  Of course, that leads to owning numerous CDs and bonds, and repurchasing when they mature.  Owning bond mutual funds or ETFs has the risk that the value decreases when interests rise and there is no guarantee of recover the original cost by holding to maturity.

The main reason I am going to bond ETFs is for simplification.   Bond ETFs make monthly interest payment and take care of the reinvestment process when bonds mature.    Hopefully, even with bond volatility and the the fluctuation of ETF values, I will still receive approximately the same amount of interest each month towards my monthly retirement "paycheck."

Here's what I've been doing:

Taxable accounts

I've been purchasing municipal bond ETFs: SCMB, VTEB, and VCRM.    SCMB has been the biggest purchase.   

Non taxable accounts -IRAs

I've been purchasing taxable bond ETFs:  BND and SCHZ.

I've only owned the ETFs about a week.  So far the municipal bond ETFs have been fairly stable.  The taxable bond ETFs have declined slightly, about 0.2%

Analysis

My main criteria is if we get consistent payment over time and the impact of interest changes on the amount.  I've only received on partial dividend since I bought shares before and after the ex-dividend date of the 1st.  Next month, I will get a better idea of the monthly payment amount to expect from these bond ETFs.

For more on The Practice of Personal Finance, check back every  Wednesday for a new segment.

This is not financial, fixed income, nor investment advice. Please consult a professional advisor.

Copyright © 2025 Achievement Catalyst, LLC