Yogi: "Only m-mkt funds and T-Bills are "cash" alternatives. No other fund, including the ultra-ST bond funds, can formally serve that purpose."
I guess I respectfully look at this a bit differently than stated above. Cash is an asset class that requires some decisions, with risks and rewards. The most obvious form of cash are bills and coins, that you carry in a billfold/wallet, in your pocket, or stash in a some other designated spot (mattress, refrigerator, envelope in a drawer, etc.). It is pretty liquid and accessible, but there are "risks" with this choice--easily stolen, can be destroyed in a fire, hard to find in that hole in your backyard, etc. There can be practical limits to "how much" cash can be stored in those locations as well.
Then there are those "safe" locations in banks/credit unions, etc. in the form of checking accounts, savings accounts, safety deposit boxes, CDs, etc. These have comply with the restrictions of these institutions, not always instantly accessible in any amount, vary as to their ability to generate interest and "grow", and can not exceed certain amounts to be protected under FDIC, NCUA, etc. For the past few years, bank/credit unions paid next to nothing and that "cash" did not significantly increase in value. Recently, we have had some banks failing and some accounts exceeded government protection limits.
If your criteria for where you put your cash, was in your wallet, backyard hole in the ground, envelope in a refrigerator, or in a bank or credit union, there are risks and rewards that had to be understood and accepted with that decision. When you start looking for where else to put that cash, there are different kinds of risks/rewards with those decisions. As an investor for most of my adult life, I was faced with other forms of alternatives for my cash, some much more risky than others, some with much more rewards than others, but many of them heavily recommended by various financial advisors as an important and necessary choice for what I would be experiencing in the future. I had to learn certain skill sets to help identify the risks and rewards of those investments, and steps available for me, if investing/market conditions started changing. For me personally, I held a very large percentage of that cash in equitiies when I was younger, but when I got older I was adjusting those asset options for my cash, to be more income oriented options, such as bond oefs in a falling interest rate environment.
In the past year, I used my skill sets, to reassess where I wanted to put my cash, and when the market became more volatile and risky. I sold my most volatile and risky (largely defined by Standard Deviation criteria promoted by M* definition of risk). I held on to less risky (less volatile and lower SD) investments, such as RPHIX, but I dramatically started reducing the amount in those bond oefs. I found myself holding a large amount of "traditional" cash in banks and brokerage accounts, but earning no interest and exceeding government protection limits. Then interest rates started dramatic increases, and all of a sudden I was finding interest rates for MMs, CDs, Treasuries, etc. very competitive with what I had been previously with funds like RPHIX. I chose to liquidate my holdings in RPHIX, and shifted that "cash" to MMs and many CDs within FDIC protection rules.
I apologize for this lengthy explanation of my concept of "cash", but it makes sense to me, but maybe not for others! Each individual investor can establish their criteria for what they do with their cash, and of course that will vary tremendously.
Happy Investing!!

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/19/asia-markets.html
Around the time I bought DODGX in 1991, I also bought The Japan Fund. I can't remember the ticker. I thought it would be a classic blood-in-the-streets purchase. In those days people convinced themselves that Tokyo real estate was worth more than everything in these United States. And then their market crashed hard.
After many years, I think it was sold because we needed tires for one of the vehicles. Saved us from taking equity out of the house in Marin county. And it got the kids to daycare, and us to work. So I don't regret the tradeoff.

Junk I own:
PRCPX. +3.33%. YTD
TUHYX. +4.52%
HYDB. +1.14%
****************
YTD is a long way from 5 years. But there are the dividends in the meantime. If rates stand still or come down, junk will do OK at the very least, along with a stock recovery. I'm always fully invested. The cash I hold is held in the funds I own. I'm aware of 5% CD rates. The mechanics of initiating such accounts is the bugga-boo for me.
...And of course, my own mileage certainly HAS varied---- by a huge amount--- to the downside in TUHYX. At least I'm "in the black" with the other two.

@stillers, you seem to have quite an anger problem. Bottom line is I never once said a CD ladder wasn't a good idea. I tried to covey that bond funds also may be turning the corner and starting to give decent returns - for anyone who chooses that investment path. Even at your dismay and scorn.

Ah, c'mon man!
If I really had an anger problem and dealt in scorn, I'd ask you if you think the Bills will EVER win a Super Bowl! Or even ever get there again and, well, lose again!
And I'd be sure to give you 0:13 to reply, make sure all your players have their helmets, and warn you about drifting too far to the right!
My only purpose on this thread was to point up that bond fund investors generally seek 4%-5% TRs. And that those rates of return are currently available in non-callable CDs, with higher rates having been available at the peak.
Also, many investors don't seem to understand that those incredibly unsexy CDs are there for the taking, if they could only get out of their own way.
So while bond fund investors over the next 5 years will be putting in time and effort trying to get their 4%-5% TRs, I'll be putting on a slew of golf courses, knowing that we have a 5+-yr CD ladder in place of those bond funds that is paying in excess of 5%.
No need for anyone to read that again s-l-o-w-l-y, unless of course you still don't get it.
BTW, I NEVER stated that CDs were the only option. But hey, it's the internet, so feel free to parrot it over-and-over-and-over again and it will become a fact (to some/most).

A lot of this spring’s US regional banking crisis can be explained this way:

• 1) Banks bought a lot of Treasury bonds and other US government-backed securities when interest rates were low, paying roughly 100 cents on the dollar for them.
• 2) Interest rates went up a lot, driving the prices of those bonds down to, say, 85 cents on the dollar.
• 3) Banks had big losses on those bonds, eating through a lot of their capital.
• 4) People noticed, stocks went down, deposits fled, some banks failed and others have looked shaky.

One solution to this crisis would be that, if the bonds magically went back to being worth 100 cents on the dollar, the banks would mostly be fine again. That seems improbable, though I guess one interesting mechanism would be if the banking crisis caused enough of a recession to drive long-term interest rates back to where they were in 2020. Then the bonds would be fine, though probably the banks would have credit losses.
Another solution to this crisis would be that, if the US government just bought the bonds from the banks at 100 cents on the dollar, the banks would mostly be fine again. Of course then the government would have paid 100 cents for stuff worth 85 cents, which seems bad. But through the magic of held-to-maturity accounting, you can sort of wave your hands and pretend that it’s not bad. If the government paid 100 cents today for a bond worth 85 cents, and then held it until it matured, it would get back 100 cents. (Plus interest, though not very much.) In some accounting sense, the government would not lose any money: It would get a below-market rate of interest on its money for the next few years, but it would technically get all of its money back.
And in fact this is kind of how the banks thought of these bonds: They were often in the banks’ held-to-maturity portfolios, meaning that they didn’t need to be marked down when they lost value due to changing interest rates. It’s just that, when people notice this stuff and deposits flee, you can’t hold the bonds to maturity, because you have to sell them, at a loss, to pay back depositors. But the government is not funded by short-term deposits, so it really can hold the bonds to maturity.
And in fact this is kind of, a little bit, a solution that the government hit on: In response to the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, the US Federal Reserve announced a new Bank Term Funding Program that would lend the banks 100 cents on the dollar against bonds worth 85 cents on the dollar. This is not the same thing as buying the bonds at 100 cents on the dollar — the banks, rather than the government, are still economically on the hook for the losses — but it is motivated by the same sort of thinking. “Eventually these bonds will pay out 100 cents on the dollar, so it’s fine to lend 100 cents on the dollar against them, even if they are worth 85 cents today.”
But nobody has actually embraced a program of “the government will just buy the bonds back at par to make the banks healthy again,” because it is kind of an extreme transfer of losses from banks to taxpayers, even if you can wave your hands a bit and pretend it isn’t. But here’s this from Andrew Ackerman at the Wall Street Journal:

Banks have spent the past week or so testing what would be a clever gambit: Paying billions of dollars they collectively owe to replenish a federal deposit insurance fund using Treasurys instead of cash.
The idea—floated to regulators and lawmakers by PNC Financial Services Group and supported by others—could allow banks to take securities that are currently worth, say, 90 cents on the dollar, and give them to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. at full price. That would effectively shift losses clogging the banks’ balance sheets to the FDIC, according to people familiar with the proposal. ...
Proponents say nothing in the law says FDIC fees have to be paid in cash, so the agency could change its rules. They say the move, if greenlighted by the FDIC, would help the banking system address the way rising rates over the past year have saddled lenders with billions in losses on their portfolios of bonds. Those losses helped sink Silicon Valley Bank in March, sparking turmoil across the banking sector. …
Supporters say the government would hold the securities until maturity, allowing them to recover principal and interest on the debt. The government would suffer no losses, they say.

The FDIC has spent billions of dollars on its bank rescues — which is also a transfer of losses from banks to the government to make the banking system more solvent — but it is getting the money back by charging a special assessment to be paid by about 113 big banks. If the banks pay the assessment with Treasuries that are worth 90 cents on the dollar, but that count for 100 cents on the dollar, then they get a little discount on the assessment and get to move unpleasant assets off their balance sheets.
Why stop there? They should pay their taxes in Treasuries. Really what they should do is pay executive bonuses in Treasuries: “We’re giving you a $1 million bonus, technically it is only worth $850,000 but if you hold it to maturity it’s a million.”

I owned RPHIX for several years, as a "cash alternative" fund, but no longer own it. In a market where fixed income instruments were unattractive, I thought RPHIX was a historically attractive option, but now there are more attractive options available. I have never owned RSIIX, but I maintained it on a watchlist for a long period, and was impressed with its performance trend. I hope both funds continue to do well going forward, but I am not a buyer for now.

I found it because I was looking for a tool to compare the overlapping holdings of funds. And they do have a free tool that allows you to do that: https://www.etfrc.com/funds/overlap.php
Sure would be cool if that overlap feature could be added to observer premium. Anybody know of a free one for mutual funds?
Second question concerns their ALTAR Score™.

For equities, we calculate the ALTAR Score™ using the formula on the right—itself a derivation of the old Dividend Discount Model—where:
Avg. ROE is the average return on equity of firms in the fund for the five (5) years up to and including the current forecast year
P/BV is the forward price-to-book value based on current market prices
fees is the annual expense ratio of the ETF
The relationship between Return on Equity and Price-to-Book Value multiples is well established in the academic literature. This formula is designed to forecast the likely internal rate of return to business owners. It is important to note that it is not a target price, and there are no timing or momentum components to it.

Here is the graphic they mention . . .

This well out of my wheel house, so I am interested to hear what others think of the ALTAR scoring.

The 2019 ProPublica piece is out of date.

The IRS announced significant changes Monday [Dec 30, 2019] to its deal with the tax prep software industry. Now companies are barred from hiding their free products from search engines [as reported in the ProPublica piece] such as Google, and a years-old prohibition on the IRS creating its own online filing system has been scrapped.

https://www.govexec.com/oversight/2020/01/irs-reforms-free-file-program-drops-agreement-not-compete-turbotax/162167/
Intuit did itself no favors by hiding the free software from users. Instead of living with half a loaf, it could wind up with crumbs. It, and H&R Block, shot themselves in the foot by going further and completely dropping out of the Free File program in 2021 and 2020 respectively.
https://www.propublica.org/article/turbotax-maker-intuit-will-leave-free-tax-filing-partnership-with-irs
From that piece:

The program was founded as a gambit by the tax prep industry, led by Intuit, after the George W. Bush administration proposed that the IRS create a free online filing option for taxpayers.

Worth noting who made the original proposal, given that

Republicans are already lining up against the plan, fearing it could eventually lead to a system where the IRS fills out people’s returns for them, which they say is a conflict of interest since the agency also enforces tax laws.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/16/irs-free-online-filing-system-00097198
Why haven't I seen lots of homeowners up in arms about their municipal government determining how much their property is worth (assessor), then based on that number calculating how much they owe in property taxes, and even collecting the taxes online. And if you don't pay, they'll send the county sheriff to arrest you, the city attorney to prosecute you, and the municipal court to try you.
Certainly those must be blatant conflicts of interest as well. I protest! :-)

[snip]
BTW, IRS is setting up online tax filing for free. If they can make the user interface similar to that ofTurboTax, that would be very helpful for those with straightforward tax filing.

Intuit will vigorously oppose plans from the IRS to offer free tax filing.
"But the success of TurboTax rests on a shaky foundation, one that could collapse overnight if the U.S. government did what most wealthy countries did long ago and made tax filing simple and free for most citizens."
"For more than 20 years, Intuit has waged a sophisticated, sometimes covert war to prevent the government from doing just that, according to internal company and IRS documents and interviews with insiders. The company unleashed a battalion of lobbyists and hired top officials from the agency that regulates it. From the beginning, Intuit recognized that its success depended on two parallel missions: stoking innovation in Silicon Valley while stifling it in Washington."
"Internal presentations lay out company tactics for fighting 'encroachment,' Intuit’s catchall term for any government initiative to make filing taxes easier — such as creating a free government filing system or pre-filling people’s returns with payroll or other data the IRS already has. 'For a decade proposals have sought to create IRS tax software or a ReturnFree Tax System; All were stopped,' reads a confidential 2007 PowerPoint presentation from an Intuit board of directors meeting. The company’s 2014-15 plan included manufacturing '3rd-party grass roots' support."
Link

s-l-o-w-l-y try to explain why an investor, going forward, should invest in either taxable or municipal bond funds in their portfolio's fixed income sleeve instead of say, 5-yr, 4.50%, non-callable CDs.
But please leave out the widely understood part about past performance being no guarantee of future results. Got that part.

s-l-o-w-l-y? I don't know how one writes slowly, but if you're asking for gory details, I'm happy to oblige.
Let's start with the question. It gives as one option a 5-yr, 4.5% non-callable CD. Even non-callable CDs may be redeemed early by a debtor. Should a bank fail (no longer an unexpected event), high yielding CDs may be redeemed by the FDIC or reset to a lower rate by an acquiring bank.
Thus actual rate of return, though highly likely to be as stated, is not certain. Some posters have addressed this risk by saying they would only buy CDs from well-managed banks. You did not. (I discovered that by reading your post s-l-o-w-l-y.)
The question carries an implicit assumption that an investor is absolutely certain that they will not want to withdraw money early. Any possibility of pulling money out would expose the investor to the same interest rate risk as experienced by a bond fund.
Further, the investor would have less flexibility in selling off a CD (basically, all or nothing on a per-CD basis) as opposed to a bond fund where one can sell as little as 0.001 shares. In addition, the investor would take a big hit on the bid-ask spread that isn't present when selling bond fund shares.
So already we have a reason - flexibility - for an investor to consider using a bond fund rather than a CD with the same (or even marginally lower) expectation value of rate of return. Maybe you wouldn't, but the question was asked about any investor.
That brings us to the expected rate of return going forward. As explained (slowly) above, aside from minor risks expected rate of return is pretty well though not quite 100% certain for the CD. The challenge is to figure out at a minimum what the expected rate of return of a bond fund is. Ideally one would want to estimate not only the expected return but the dispersion of possible outcomes. That plays into risk analysis, which I'll (slowly) get to.
What you did was look at past 5 year returns. In do so, you acknowledged but disregarded the fact that past returns may be poor predictors of future returns. Putting that problem aside, you also disregarded that fact that all rates were lower over the past five years than they are now. One could make at least a passing attempt at compensating for this this by looking at 5 year CD rates 5 years ago vs. now and adjusting the question's comparison accordingly.
According to depositaccounts.com, 5 years ago the best one could do was about 3.3%, while now it is, as you stated, about 4.5%. So if we use your method of estimating bond fund returns going forward based on past performance, we should adjust those past performance figures upward by about 1.2%. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.
But situations change, and as already noted, past returns may be poor predictors.
bond funds returning 7%-8% over any LT period of time ... just doesn't happen.
This is easy to disprove by counter example. It does sometimes happen. From inception (12/31/1986) through the end of 2002, VBMFX had an annualized return of 7.85%. More generally, looking at 10 year rolling averages, AAA corporate bonds had annualized returns ranging between 7.30% and 11.29%(!) for every 10 year period ending between 1975 and 2000. So, over a period of at least 30 years (three non-overlapping ten year periods between 1965 and 1995) the average return on AAA corporates was more than 7.3%. That seems long term enough.
Baa corporates did even better. Their 10 year average rate of return surpassed 7.26% every 10 year period ending between 1973 and 2005, topping out at a 10 year average return of 12.84%. Interested in T-bonds? The same analysis shows that 10 year T-bonds had ten year rolling average returns exceeding 7.12% for every period ending between 1984 and 2002.
Source is spreadsheet from NYU/Stern, whose ultimate data source is FRED.
Even though you asked for an explanation given s-l-o-w-l-y, I can understand your quick and dirty search for 5 year bond fund returns. I can understand your saying that there were 1921 funds even though 138 of them didn't have five year records. I can understand your excluding the 114 funds that are closed at Fidelity, even if some of them were open five years ago.
I can understand your using Fidelity's screener though it gives fewer than half the number taxable bond funds with 5 year records that Portfolio Visualizer's screener returns. Because a reasonable (though unverified) assumption is that the funds currently open and sold by Fidelity are representative of all the bond funds available five years ago.
But when it comes to expected returns going forward, one is going to have to do better than assert 7%-8% LT returns just don't happen.
So far, most of what I've done is explain why some of the data presented is either unhelpful, biased, or simply wrong. I've also provided one rationale for preferring bond funds to broker-sold CDs, viz. flexibility.
Implicit in your reasoning (and that of most others) is that investors are risk averse. Someone who is truly risk indifferent will consider a bond fund with an expected 4.5% return to be just as good - not better, not worse - than a CD at that rate. (As I explained before, given the additional risk of possibly needing access to the money, someone who is risk indifferent would demand a higher rate from the CD than from the bond fund.)
An investor who is only slightly risk averse will not need a much higher expected rate of return to choose the bond fund. So the question comes down to: what is a reasonable expectation for five year returns of some bond funds? Past performance used blindly clearly is not a good approach to answer this; there have been extended periods of time when bonds have returned well in execess of 7%. It could happen again.
The question is not what has happened before, but what (and why) one expects going forward.
Others have offered some explanations for better returns going forward - based on their expectations for interest rates. I could dig up a bunch of papers explaining that over particular long terms, what one should expect from bond funds (total return) is determined by their current yields. That's how I look at bond funds, assuming that I'll hold for a long period of time.
Checking out current SEC yields, it's not hard to find several familiar funds yielding above 4.5%. Many multisector funds sport yields above 6% (i.e. 1.5% or more above the CD) such as DBLNX (8.69%) and MWFSX (7.69%). PIMIX (5.86%) comes in just below 6%, but still well above the CD rate. The core plus fund TGLMX has a 6.17% yield. Even a fund as conservative as FCNVX has a yield above 5% and can serve as a dynamic (flexible) cash backup.
(These are not recommendations; just a listing a few familiar funds.)
We've seen this question before: RPHYX/RPHIX vs. 6 mo T-bills. As here, I used current data, not past performance (i.e. 2022 or earlier). What one gleans from past performance is general behavior of a fund, not performance that can be easily extrapolated.

Crash, If you have a Fidelity account, you can choose from hundreds of new-issue CDs, many with yields exceeding 5%. I have constructed two CD ladders extending up to 5 years with total yields about 5.1%. Similar options are available at Schwab and other investment sites.

Thank you, but I want not to be using more than a single broker for simplicity and consolidation, and I'm already with TRP. It has its faults. I inquired once, and FEES were mentioned. Don't need fees.

Crash, If you have a Fidelity account, you can choose from hundreds of new-issue CDs, many with yields exceeding 5%. I have constructed two CD ladders extending up to 5 years with total yields about 5.1%. Similar options are available at Schwab and other investment sites.

Fidelity Flex® funds are a lineup of Fidelity mutual funds that have zero expense ratios, and include proprietary active and passive funds. Flex funds are currently available only to certain fee-based accounts offered by Fidelity, like Fidelity Go®. Unlike many other mutual funds, the Flex funds do not charge management fees or, with limited exceptions, fund expenses. Instead, a portion of the advisory fee you pay is allocated to access the Flex funds in which your account will be invested.

https://www.fidelity.com/managed-accounts/fidelity-go/investment-account-faqs
They're generally good funds. Be advised that Fidelity is still tinkering with its lineup. For example, Fidelity recently shuttered the Intrinsic Opportunities Fund (FFNPX), a MCV offering. It looks like Fidelity decided to change its lineup from mostly actively managed funds to mostly indexed funds. Here's the original lineup (CityWire PR) and the current lineup (M* search by name)
One of the few actively managed funds is FJTDX. It is managed by the same team as the retail fund FCNVX, with similar ultrashort duration, though the actual holdings while similar don't seem to be identical. That is, these funds are not clones. Nevertheless, performance difference seems to approximate the difference in ERs, i.e. 0.25%. Here's a Fidelity comparison page for the two funds.
The slightly better performance of the Flex fund is somewhat illusory. As noted above, the fund is getting paid management fees out of your pocket. They're just getting laundered through advisory service charges. So the management fees aren't subtracted from the performance figures of the Flex funds, making the Flex funds look a little better than they actually are.
It's a matter of perspective - how you want to allocate the advisory fees in your mind - do they all go for advisory services (when you compare advisory fees from different providers), or do you mentally reduce the advisory fees and add that to the Flex funds' ERs, thus reducing the funds' performance numbers?
Finally, with respect to Vanguard changes, Vanguard dropped the free financial plan offering years before the pandemic. I'm just not sure of exactly which year.

Totally agree with @hank and @MikeM.
CDs and T bills are still cash equivalents, and I own plenty of them for the time being. They are maturing in coming years, and they will be deploy in bond ladders and bond funds.

Several fund families now have 0% ER funds for advisory accounts only. Fido version is Fido Flex, TIAA version is class W, etc. I am sure that the firms get some cut from the advisory fees although this isn't visible to clients.
Fido also has retail Fido ZERO funds where the ER is 0% but Fido says that it uses security lending extensively to recover costs and cheaper indexes from related Geode Capital - it was started by Fido, then only controlled, finally spun off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geode_Capital_Management
Both Fido and Schwab offer extensive advisory services through affiliated advisors. These advisors use firms' platforms and have other contractual agreements. I think that Vanguard got out of this type of advisory business years ago.

I did not understand the initial question as asking individuals to justify why they own any particular asset themselves or what they advise others to do. I regret having responded, as I don’t have time to wrangle with others over whether they should or should not own bond funds. With hundreds of billions invested in all the different bond funds available it is clear many investors find them useful in portfolio construction. It would be absurd to view bond funds as a single asset type anyway. Some mix in equities, some short bonds, some maintain ultra-short durations, etc. It’s doubtful any who’ve been managing investments for 25 or more years suddenly woke up this morning with an entirely new view of bond funds or their desirability as one component of their portfolio.
Did anyone say you shouldn't own cash? I missed that if they did.

I didn't mention specific financial planning because this particular service was discontinued years ago and I don't know whether a service like this is integrated into Vanguard's current service offering.

So much has changed at Vanguard post-pandemic, and their phone service has declined. I still recall being the Voyager Select and Flagship customers. I will give them a call later in the evening 8am - 8 pm, EST) and report back.
At present, there is little details on their plan. Fidelity has their advisory plans, but we are unfamiliar with their Fidelity Flex Funds, and the level of planning that Fidelity offers.

He seemed like a good guy, from what I could tell. His survived by his wife and two adult sons. Had a career of just over 30 years with Kornitzer Capital Management. Passed away at the age of 54. The family asks that you consider a donation in his memory to Carl's Cause, a non-profit that works to address the stigma around mental health issues.

But please leave out the widely understood part about past performance being no guarantee of future results. Got that part.

Ok, but that's exactly what you based your whole argument on. Past 3-5 year performance.
I do agree with everyone else though that with CD's at 5%, it's hard to take on more risk to get 6, 7 or 8% as rates plateau or start to come down. But it may be close to that time IMHO. I do believe the next 3-5 years will not look like the past 3-5 years. Extrapolate YTD returns on some of these funds now and it shows returns growing greater than 5% for the year.
...

Anyone who actually spent a few minutes of time on the links I posted would have likely seen that the results are just as bad for the bond fund universe over the past 10 years.
Had you, would you have instead stated "I do believe the next 3-5 (and 10) years will not look like the past 3-5 (and 10) years"?
And would your basis also be that if you extrapolate out the recent ST bounce for those periods, bond fund investors will (I guess, magically) get LT TRs of "6, 7 or 8%" for those periods?
I'll ignore your wild-eyed notion of bond funds returning 7%-8% over any LT period of time because it just doesn't happen.
But I will address the HOPE of 6% LT because, in the past, it was achieved by a few taxable bond funds. To wit, did you see that only 7/1,921 taxable bond funds returned over 6% during the LIFE of their respective funds, um, that was during the greatest, 30+year bond bull market in history?
Bottom Lines: Starting several months ago, investors were given the once in over a decade opportunity to buy (ugh, unsexy) CDs and ASSURE themselves % returns for the next 5 years equal to/greater than the LT % we all strive for in bond funds, which is generally 4%-5%.
Many missed the short-lived peak period. But all still have a chance to get it done. If they can just get over themselves.
I don't understand the widely held bias against CDs paying 5% as a preferred alternative to bond funds for the next 5 years.
I don't understand why investors who are striving for LT bond sleeve TRs of 4%-5% don't get that all their time, energy and HOPE spent trying to achieve that level of returns is effectively wasted as guaranteed returns of those levels are there for the taking.

It used to be (until 2015 or so?) that Vanguard would provide Voyager Select and Flagship customers with a free financial plan. After reviewing the basic survey that a customer filled out, a CFP would discuss the customer's situation over the phone for about an hour. There would be shorter followup conversations, before and after the plan was prepared.
The plan was not cookie-cutter, at least in the sense that it provided for keeping a lot of non-Vanguard assets, both individual stocks and funds. The plan offered suggestions on how to deal with specific (overweighted) individual stock holdings. Vanguard said it had tools to help the DIY investor implement the plan on their own, or that Vanguard could manage the portfolio for the investor.
I didn't mention specific financial planning because this particular service was discontinued years ago and I don't know whether a service like this is integrated into Vanguard's current service offering.