ZB, I think your initial choices (VWINX, etc) are all fine/good candidates.
You may also wish to consider, for some, limited portion of your portfolio, closed-end funds. CEFs are focused on delivering what you stated was your goal: income. Right now -- year-end -- may be a good time to identify/take positions in CEFs. Generally, any current CEF holders who are "underwater", sell out late in the year. That surfeit of selling generally abates come the new year -- sometimes leading to price appreciation or at least stabilization.
Specifically, muni-CEFs and preferred CEFs have declined and 'may' offer value. Muni income is of course tax-free. Most preferreds -- generally those NOT issued by REITs -- offer favorable (lower) tax treatment than bond income.
Purchasing individual preferreds might also be an option, especially in light of their recent sell-offs. 6% yields are now available at/near/below par, in many cases from VERY credit-worthy issuers. The downside is their prices are subject to interest-rate risk -- which generally will NOT impact the issuer's ability to pay their preferred coupon.
dividendyieldhunter.com and quantumonline are both good resources for identifying income vehicles.
I generally limit CEFs and pfds to an overall 20% of my portfolio -- and I do trade (rather than hold them) --- so that for some periods of time, I will hold none. The price swings generally make them conducive to pruning positions when prices get too rich. Presently, I've approximately 15% in CEFs, all from recent (post-election) purchases.
Good luck.

Thank you for this. I researched many cefs/pfds last night and think your approach makes a lot of sense.

Point well-take Derf.
I guess what I was trying to say is: why would rates go down and stay down over the next few years, thus why aren't BL's a good investment for the time being?
I don't expect 10+% going forward, but as a stabilizer/hedge with a decent yield, that doesn't seen too bad to me. Again, I am just learning about this category, so I could be way-off; that is why I pose these questions and thoughts. I am trying to educate myself and these forums are often a good avenue!
Matt

At 2 1/2% of total portfolio, I don't think it will change anything if moving from one Total Return bond fund to another. If Total Return funds drop say 10% next year, that only moves your portfolio 0.25%. Do you need a domestic core bond fund. Certainly not for growth, but it probably adds stability to the portfolio. But your portfolio may already have a good mix of bonds since I believe you own a couple good balanced funds.
For myself, I've been following the trends, both real and speculative. As you said, the changing environment is predicted interest rate increases. I've moved more into TIPS which so far have dragged and into Floating Rate Bank Loan funds which are doing great. PFIDX is a Pimco fund I'm using in this environment.

Why do many seem so be down on BL funds? The prior two years were not stellar; yes 2016 has been.
I am just becoming familiar with BL's and have recently purchased LFRAX (Lord Abbett; pays a 4+% yield). In a rising interest rate environment, i would presume over the next two or three years, doesn't an investment in a FRBL's make some sense as a diversifier and hedge? Maybe not as a long-term/forget-about-it holding, but maybe as a medium-term investment? Or, at least while rates are rising?
I understand BL's move more off of the LIBOR, but does anybody think rates, in general, are going down and staying down for very long?
Do you believe that all of the rate increases over the next two years have already been "baked-in"? Are there better investment vehicles in a rising rate environment, which we appear to be in now and probably for the foreseeable future?
Of course, NO ONE knows for sure, but we are being told this by those who influence rates; shouldn't we pay heed?
Does anyone see a recession in the near-term?
I also own PONDX, PTIAX and GIBLX along with a Muni, so, I am not putting all of my eggs in one basket (pardon the cliche's).
Thank you for any comments, opinions and thoughts!!
Matt
p.s.
I've posted similar comments and questions on M*

2.51% is not much of your portfolio. Do you have 97.5% in equities?
I think in general bonds are going to struggle for the foreseeable future. Rising rates are guaranteed per Janet Yellen. With that said, there are some good places to check out in the fixed income arena. EM bonds, inflation adjusted bonds are two to look at.
It sounds like you might have six figure in TRP. Does that give you any preference or perks?

DLFNX is my only core (core-plus) dedicated US bond fund. It's just 2.51% of portfolio. But I think I can make better use of the $3,700.00 that's in there, particularly after the seismic shift following the election. I make few changes to my portfolio along the way because I do a lot of digging before choosing a fund. Originally, I wanted Gundlach's know-how at the helm, and I also did not yet have a domestic bond position at all. But such a fund as DLFNX, though respectable and reliable, will not help to get me where I want to go, in this changed landscape in 2017 and beyond.
Three-quarters of my stuff is with TRP, and if any change resulted in consolidating (and ergo simplifying) by putting more $$$ into TRP, that suits me. PRHYX is closed to new investors. What about RPIHX? I also see a very new fund: PTTFX which charges investors $20.00 above and beyond the ER if the balance is below $10,000.00--- but I could manage to initiate a starting position with $10K. ..... Seems to me that PTTFX is ostensibly the same sort of fund as MWTRX. "Total Return." But I can't even find a portfolio within that fund anywhere, even at the TRP website. ... I don't like RPSIX because it's a fund of funds.
.......Or, shall I just liquidate DLFNX? It's one of just 2 funds I own that are in a regular, taxable, investment account, rather than IRA. I could use the proceeds to step-up the size of my stake in PNM, an electric utility. PNM is in a transition, shedding nuclear and coal-fired plants but everything I look at tells me I should definitely commit more money to it. (It's less than 1% of portf. right now.)
Do I NEED a US domestic core-plus bond fund, after all? I am otherwise very well diversified. No question about THAT. Thanks for your responses. They are always helpful.

Through Friday over the past three months Morningstar's 16 taxable bond fund categories show 12 with negative returns. Two have small positive returns under 0.75% The two real winners have been bank loans at 2.20% and high yield corporates at 2.15%. However in those two categories it's not hard to find many with returns in the 3.5% to 4%+ range. And at least with the bank loans, with very little volatility along the way. Munis in the non taxable category have all been taken to the cleaners the past three months because of their tendency to follow Treasuries. Will be interesting to see if these trends persist into January. When Januaries are trend changers be very wary.

Now the Fed has raised rate by 25 basis points. There are more to come next year. So bond fund would face more headwind going into 2017. As msf pointed out, it would be challenging to generate 4% yield without incurring additional risk in terms of credit quality (junk bonds) and currency (EM debts). EM bond funds had a sizable decline recently as USD strengths. Investment grade and intermediate term bond funds saw a meaningful decline since October. Surprisingly, several junk bonds did okay. For example,
OSITX - invested in short term junk bonds. Skillful managers.
VWEHX - invested in the "less junkier" end of junk bonds. Vanguard low expense ratio.

FYI: We've had a bumpy year in the fund world, full of important manager changes. To make sure you haven’t missed any, I compiled this quick rundown of the 11 biggest changes and our first take on the impact of those changes. (I have a monthly column in Morningstar FundInvestor that tracks changes.) It’s worth following funds that made manager changes for at least a year or two after the change, to look for signs of how the new managers will run their funds.
Regards,
Ted
http://news.morningstar.com/articlenet/article.aspx?id=784966

Generating 4% yield will take some risk, although if interest rates rise as treasuries will yield 3+% and it will be easier.. but that will be due to inflation so your target may move.
You need to consider the loss of principle risk you run reaching for yield as there is no such thing as a free lunch.
there are multiple advisory services available for stocks and mutual funds but few for income investors. Most of the equity advisors have an "income portfolio" that is loaded with equities and if you look carefully, lost 20% (vs 45% for SP500) in 2008. This would destroy anyone needing current income.
VWINX is everybody's suggestion here, but M* discusses the impact of their bond portfolio ( which has a duration of over 5 years) on their recent returns. In funds like this you have to take what they give you.
I think traditional open end mutual funds are a bit limited here, but there are some good choices in other posts like ZEOIX and RPSIX
Look at Kiplinger's Income newsletter. He has a lot of ideas, doesn't trade much at all ( too little in my opinion), but points to ideas most of us haven't thought of . Most of these are individual stocks, REITS, MLPs, BDCs etc. However, he seems to believe that riding a position down 50 to 75% is Ok if it is still paying a good dividend.
You can also set up your own dividend stock portfolio if you like to do the background work. There are a lot of ideas in Barron's for example, or M* dividend investor.
Doing it on your own will save you 0.8 to 1.25% in an actively manged fund, but you have to be knowledgeable, spend a fair amount of time reading and run some risks
The other thing that has not been mentioned is to assemble your own bond ladder with increasing maturities. you can roll over the shorter maturies as they mature and re-invest at higher interest rates. There are several ETFs that mature at specific dates that would work for this. Look at Guggenheim Bullet shares
You can do alright if you assemble a collection of dividend growth stocks, high yield bonds with short maturities and watch them carefully, but 4% will be difficult

@David_Snowball, I noticed the low volatility trend since 11/8. It is more likely other factors besides high cash position contributed to this behavior. Perhaps Paul will share more details on the portfolio in the near future.

The most interesting development so far, in the short story of Seafarer Value: in the week following the US presidential election (11/8-11/15), SFGIX and Morningstar's EM peer group dropped a bit under 6%. SFVLX, which is fully invested, dropped about 0.85%. In the three days following the election, the EMs dropped about 4% and SFVLX about 0.1%.
Seafarer says "cash and other" is 16% of the portfolio; Morningstar says cash is de minimis and "other" is about a third. Hmmm ... Seafarer's portfolio report is 9/30, Morningstar's is 7/30. Not sure why they haven't updated. I've been trying not to pester Seafarer so Paul can focus on getting things running, but perhaps after the 12/30 portfolio update I might ask to talk.
David

Hi @msf
Excellent points, too often outside of considerations; and needs to be studied/analyzed properly relative to bonds. For many investments, the past chart confirms history, the current chart confirms only the day and a future chart may be as good as blind faith.
NOTE: trends do exist, and trends come and go when we aren't paying attention.
msf noted:
"IMHO, there's no way to get a 4% yield without a good amount of risk. Not that that isn't okay, just that one should be aware of the risks assumed. There are the most obvious ones - interest rate risk (loss of value due to increasing rates) and credit risk (delayed payments, defaults, loss of principal).
But there are some others as well embedded in several of the suggestions. One is declining value of your portfolio, not due to interest rate risk or even inflation (though that one's omnipresent). Rather it is using principal to get higher current yield.
If you buy a bond with above market interest (current yield, coupon), you'll be paying above face value (premium bond). For instance, you might pay $110 for a bond with a $100 face (par) value, you'll get that higher stream of payments, but you're gradually losing value, beyond inflation. Same thing with bond funds. This is why I prefer to look at SEC yield, which incorporates this loss (or gain) in bond value in calculating an effective yield. "PONDX's trailing yield is 7%+, but its SEC yield is 3.35%. Conversely, DVY's trailing yield is 3.09%, but its SEC yield is 3.46%.
Regards,
Catch

IMHO, there's no way to get a 4% yield without a good amount of risk. Not that that isn't okay, just that one should be aware of the risks assumed. There are the most obvious ones - interest rate risk (loss of value due to increasing rates) and credit risk (delayed payments, defaults, loss of principal).
But there are some others as well embedded in several of the suggestions. One is declining value of your portfolio, not due to interest rate risk or even inflation (though that one's omnipresent). Rather it is using principal to get higher current yield.
If you buy a bond with above market interest (current yield, coupon), you'll be paying above face value (premium bond). For instance, you might pay $110 for a bond with a $100 face (par) value, you'll get that higher stream of payments, but you're gradually losing value, beyond inflation. Same thing with bond funds. This is why I prefer to look at SEC yield, which incorporates this loss (or gain) in bond value in calculating an effective yield.
PONDX's trailing yield is 7%+, but its SEC yield is 3.35%. Conversely, DVY's trailing yield is 3.09%, but its SEC yield is 3.46%.
Another risk is leverage. Funds, especially but not exclusively CEFs (e.g. PONDX also leverages), borrow money at short term rates to buy long term securities yielding more. This works so long as the long term securities continue to yield more. A risk is that rising interest rates will make replenishing cash more expensive (as the short term debt matures), and perhaps even cost more than the fund is receiving on its older long term securities.
Here's a M* video from 2013 (a few years before short term rates started rising), that explains how these funds may work:
http://beta.morningstar.com/videos/610062/What-Will-Higher-Rates-Mean-for-Levered-Closed-End-Funds.html
Then there's the use of derivatives. This can be anything as "simple" as mortgage backed securities (with call risk that can behave poorly with rising interest rates - negative convexity) to a slew of more esoteric stuff. In its analysis of DLTNX, M* lists some of these (while acknowledging that DLTNX has matured a bit): "These securities, which included inverse floater, interest-only, and inverse interest-only mortgage tranches, throw off lots of income but can also be highly volatile and suffer from bouts of illiquidity."
For the most part, you're seeing lots of fine suggestions here, and there's only a little I can add to them. I would not use BAB - Build America Bonds haven't been issued for years. As a result, all the other funds (e.g. BABS [Nuveen], BABZ [PIMCO]) have closed down or broadened the types of bonds they can invest in.
If you're looking at SCHD and DVY, you might want also want to look at VYM. It invests a bit more broadly (~400 securities vs. ~100 for the others), with half the turnover (11% vs. 21-22%). Not significant differences, just another alternative to throw into the mix.
Finally, I'm still working on figuring out how PGBAX seems to walk on water - trailing and SEC yields of 5%+, no leverage. It does dive deeply into junk (averaging B rating), but the closest world bond I found so far, RBTRX, has a significantly longer duration and an SEC yield of "just" 4.5%. So credit rating alone isn't the full story.
If this type of portfolio appeals to you, you might also look at TTRZX or GIM. GIM has been trading at large discounts for the past three years (perhaps reflecting its poor performance over that period, or perhaps its move to almost all EM bonds that typically trade at similar discounts).

ZB, I think your initial choices (VWINX, etc) are all fine/good candidates.
You may also wish to consider, for some, limited portion of your portfolio, closed-end funds. CEFs are focused on delivering what you stated was your goal: income. Right now -- year-end -- may be a good time to identify/take positions in CEFs. Generally, any current CEF holders who are "underwater", sell out late in the year. That surfeit of selling generally abates come the new year -- sometimes leading to price appreciation or at least stabilization.
Specifically, muni-CEFs and preferred CEFs have declined and 'may' offer value. Muni income is of course tax-free. Most preferreds -- generally those NOT issued by REITs -- offer favorable (lower) tax treatment than bond income.
Purchasing individual preferreds might also be an option, especially in light of their recent sell-offs. 6% yields are now available at/near/below par, in many cases from VERY credit-worthy issuers. The downside is their prices are subject to interest-rate risk -- which generally will NOT impact the issuer's ability to pay their preferred coupon.
dividendyieldhunter.com and quantumonline are both good resources for identifying income vehicles.
I generally limit CEFs and pfds to an overall 20% of my portfolio -- and I do trade (rather than hold them) --- so that for some periods of time, I will hold none. The price swings generally make them conducive to pruning positions when prices get too rich. Presently, I've approximately 15% in CEFs, all from recent (post-election) purchases.
Good luck.

The overall expense ratio for the entire portfolio was .51%. Thanks again for your help

SCHD is a good choice. Super low ER.
Another option are income funds. In particular, multi Asset Income funds. They give the manager a wider scope to find income sources wherever they may be. I know TRowe Price has a few in their stable as well as Fidelity and Vanguard. Since I use American Century, I use AMJVX. It could be prudent to not depend on one single fund for this purpose but to have two or three.

Thanks! I was just playing around with numbers and came up with this. Morningstar's X-ray claims that expense ratio is just .51% and the portfolio yields over 4%. Going to research these funds a bit further. Thanks again.
 
Vanguard Wellesley®
Allocation--30% to 50% Equity - 31.25%
 
Principal Global Div
Allocation--30% to 50% Equity - 18.75%
 
Invesco Income Alloc
Allocation--30% to 50% Equity - 18.75%
 
DoubleLine Total Ret
Intermediate-Term Bond - 12.50 %
 
PIMCO Income D - 12.50%
Multisector Bond
 
Schwab US Dividend E - 6.25%
Large Value

I would not abandon low volatility as it has been working since 1968:
Swedroe Article
Kevin

Having a wider EM universe beyond Asia and much smaller asset base really helped. Furthermore he was able to close his funds at about $1B in asset - something he cannot do at Matthews. At the same time the management fee was reduced to benefit the shareholders. It is one of the lowest fee for actively managed EM funds. As I noted above, retail investors can now access the institutional share at a very reason $ amount instead of $1M.

Hello,
Due to some medical issues I may be forced to find ways to generate income. I have read this forum for some time and think the members here are top notch. I've managed my own investments for about 15 years and consider myself pretty knowledgeable. However, truth be told, I'm no expert with bonds or bond funds.
I have sought out the advise of a financial advisor and one consultant from a major discount brokerage. Both had very different opinions. The financial advisor recommended a basket of American Funds. The consultant recommended several ETF's, like BAB and high yield mutual funds. ( The actual recommended portfolio only had 18% dividend paying stocks)
Most of the assets are in a taxable account. But, I guess, I can't allow the possible tax ramifications to dictate every investment decision.
I'm thinking of funds like:
VWINX
PONDX
SCHD
DLTNX
High yield bond ?
Short term ?
Trying to generate around 4% yield with around 30% in high quality stocks, if possible. I know that interest will likely keep going higher and this could cause serious issues with the bond portion.
I would absolutely love to hear the thoughts and opinions from forum members. Thanks in advance