FOMC Statement, 10/29/25
https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20251029a.htm
Presser in 30 minutes

Howard Marks's last January memo called for a bubble. I posted the following months ago, and it's still true now. Mark's memos have lots of fluff and hardly anything about what to do.
10 months later the SP500 is up close to 20%.
I can play Marks, we are in a bubble, just to cover my axx, I don't have a clue when it will happen.

Well, the market seems to be giving the middle finger to the newly-morphed AKRE ETF. Hopefully, it's a temporary coincidence, but it's a losing bet so far as AKRE's top 5 holdings (CSU.TO, MA, BN.TO, KKR, & V), which represent almost 50% of its asset value, are having a rough go in this AI-infused market. What the heck is going on with Constellation Software??? AKRE management seems to be chasing their losses as they have invested almost 12% of their $$ into it (and are defending their decision with a letter to investors).

I buy on schedule but make lump sum investments at the beginning of the year to adjust if needed. I use bands and my EXUS allocation dropped to 12.5% last year (I allocate 20% but band 15-25%) But its already back up to 15% because this year.

"Westinghouse also manufactured some of the first refrigerators. My great uncle possessed one of the very first models (maybe from 1925) and the company recognized his fridge as one of the longest living. It was still functioning in the mid-1950's, a box on legs with its cylindrical cooling coils mounted on top of the whole shebang. It was so ugly that it had to be put out of sight in a pantry. Not that the radio @hank found would have won any beauty contest."
We had one of those in a school dormitory in 1979-1980. If I recall correctly it was either a 1927 or 1929 model. Every time it turned itself on all lights in the building dimmed a bit.

A conservative rule of thumb is to keep anything you expect to need in cash or something very close to cash, between 5 and 10 years in substantially IG bonds, and longer term in equity or near equity (e.g. HY bonds). A more modern rule of thumb is to use timeframes of 0-3 years, 3-7 years, and 7+ years.
However you slice it, 20% in equity is more like a low risk portfolio for the beginning of retirement (age 65) than one half-way through that phase. It's not high risk but adding the equity changes things significantly. Here's Portfolio Visualizer's simulation, I substituted WSHFX for CGDV because CGDV latter has too short a life to work with PV. WSHFX hasn't returned as much as CGDV, but it has a lower std dev and is the best quick hack I could come up with.
This portfolio will almost surely return positive inflation adjusted returns as opposed to an all bond portfolio that gradually loses value over time. The question here is whether that matters since you're looking to fund your wife's expenses after your death, not grow a portfolio. The tradeoff is double the volatility (probably even a bit more with CGDV instead of WSHFX).
Looking at worst case, drawdowns between 3/29/22 and 4/30/22 9/30/22 were (from M* charts):
CGDV: -21.81%
SCHD: -15.43%
ICMUX: -4.76%
RSIIX: -4.26%
RCTIX: -3.51%
DHEAX: -1.89%
CBLDX: -1.12%
SWVXX: +0.10% (my guesstimate)
RPHIX: +1.07%
Equally weighted portfolio: -5.73%
I helped nudge an 80 year old I knew into an 80/20 portfolio, so I'm not knocking 80/20. But that portfolio had more than 20% in cash and near cash.
It really depends on how you view risk, both pragmatically (will the portfolio last long enough) and psychologically (can you sleep at night). If you're trying to replace a pension one thought is a (possibly deferred) annuity. An annuity is just a stream of payments like a pension, which is why I bring it up.
An annuity would provide lifetime income to your wife, much as your pension is providing lifetime income to you. If you defer the income (either with a deferred annuity or a deferred income annuity), then there are no income payments until later. Since you're thinking about this portfolio as a replacement for your pension, it doesn't sound like you need the income stream until your pension vanishes.
A deferred fixed annuity can also guarantee that you won't lose money. As always, TANSTAAFL. The safer the investment, the lower the return. But since you expressed concern about bond funds possibly losing money it seemed worth mentioning this feature (drawback?) of some annuities.

The ups and downs of stock funds are nothing new to me, and I accept the risks, but losing money invested in a bond fund is frustrating to me, since I have naively thought of them as safe spots.

It's probably just me, but it feels like most of the bond fund discussions around here are seldom focused on the sort of safety you describe you want from bonds.
As @Junkster mentions above, you're short on investment grade. In that line, FGUSX is an ultra-short government fund about as boring as it gets. It came through 2008 pretty well, and the lead manager then is still there. The current SEC yield is 4.53, and the duration is .81. The draw down in 2008 was -.7, and -.6 in 2022.
BUBIX is another boring bond fund that might work for you. It's still yielding north of 4% as of the last dividend. It wasn't around in 2008, but it has been really boring since 2013.
PEY is a dividend stock fund that pays 4.64%. I just sold it from my taxable, which has a longer horizon for my heirs. But maybe I should consider it for my IRA? It came through 2022 at +2.45, but was hammered in 2008, off -67%. Yikes. Well, I can't remember much in equity that came through 2008 unscathed.
Good luck.

Have $50 a week going into Vanguard Primecap. May raise that to $100-200 soon.

My 403b is entirely in US value fund dividend paying RWMGX ... I waffle between splitting off 30-40% into RERGX for international diversification there and/or directing new contributions that way, but I'm still on the fence.
Most of the individual stock purchases I've done in 2025 are non-US and sometimes F-shares, fwiw saying.
Part of me is even thinking of trimming down my big position in PRWCX as well since it's US-focused

A Look Under the Hood
"Over the last 56 years, I’ve spent a lot of time making suggestions to clients regarding their investment processes and portfolios, and I’ve been on the client side as a member of various investment committees. But seldom have I been able to bridge the two, serving as an active participant in clients’ investment processes. I had an opportunity to do just that the other day, when I met with the board and senior staff of a U.S. state pension fund. I was asked to listen in and provide feedback on the results of a board-member survey their consultant had recently conducted and would be reporting on during the meeting.
The content of the consultant’s session impressed me so much that I decided to write a memo about it. I’m not disclosing the names of the state and its consultant, for obvious reasons, but I’m very pleased that they agreed to let me use the content of the meeting as raw material for this memo.
In the meeting, the consultant covered many of the things I consider “the most important thing” and often came down on the same side I would (admittedly, that might’ve contributed to why I was so impressed!). I’m going to sum up below the consultant's assessment of the board survey and my reaction. My hope is that this is as informative for you as it was for me."
PDF Version

Excellent explanation of a typical vacuum tube circuit configuration. I am struck by how much that CG Loran equipment resembles 1950/1960/1970 Western Electric telephone equipment. Which is not surprising, given how much WECO produced for the military.

My bi-weekly 401K contribution goes to a couple U.S. index funds. $2500 a month, roughly. And a lot of overall dividend re-investment. I reduced our U.S. equity investment in the first quarter, however. Some went to INTL, some went to fixed income.
I do note that the 3-mo TR on my INTL fund is lagging my US funds, though YTD INTL is still out-performing. Worth keeping an eye on.

Vacuum tubes themselves do not "generate" much of anything but heat. They do, however, frequently require high or very high DC voltages to perform their amplification function. The high voltages required typically were output from a transformer with a 120 volt AC input, and a secondary with a high voltage AC output. This high voltage AC was then routed through a vacuum tube configured as a rectifier, which converted the AC input to a DC output, which was then routed to capacitors to filter and smooth that output.
The vacuum tubes used in a small battery-operated portable radio required around 80-90 volts.
The vacuum tubes used in a typical high wattage audio amplifier required around 250-500 volts.
The vacuum tubes used in Coast Guard Loran amplifiers required several thousand volts, and a bank of 12 tubes output 1,000,000 watts of pulse power.

I worked on all of that sort of equipment for many years. When I retired as a SF Public Safety radio tech the SF Water Dept transmitters still used vacuum tubes. They were the cheapest city department of all, and never wanted to pay for anything new, like transistors, for example.
Speaking of shocks though, I did receive a few, including from an 800 volt DC Coast Guard radio transmitter. That burned a bit. But the two worst shocks in my entire life were from plain old 120 volts AC. Came close to killing me, for sure- froze my reflexes making it almost impossible to move and free myself from the voltage source.

Article states that China's nuclear ambitions far outpacing the rest of the world.
Comment section of the article is worth a read.

Actually, the United States is the global leader in the construction of cheap, safe, powerful nuclear reactors. They just happen to all be owned and operated by the United States Navy (563 reactors over the past 75 years, at last count.) So if the Navy and China can build reactors, but US power companies can't, we should probably look at why that is.
One obvious reason seems to be that neither the US Navy, nor the Chinese nuclear program needs to satisfy shareholders. Since they don't have to constantly cut costs to drive up stock price, they can instead focus on good design and safe operation. (I would have loved to see a Navy bean counter try to tell Admiral Rickover that there wasn't any money in the budget for something he wanted.)
It's unrestrained capitalism that causes the problem, not the technology.

https://nytimes.com/interactive/2025/10/22/climate/china-us-nuclear-energy-race.html

Good points. The other problem (besides spent fuel) is that the public doesn't trust nuclear power generation. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, etc spooked everyone pretty good. Few people would want it near their neighborhood. Maybe it is a problem with education, or trust?

Another scream of “Doom!” because fear sells clicks and keeps the base scared. But the kids (and the adults) are catching on: the monster under the bed is just a sock puppet.
Ah, "Ms. Pier" lands again—gotta love the autocorrect rebellion. If you're firing shots at Karine Jean-Pierre's fresh-off-the-presses memoir Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines (dropped October 21, 2025), you're not alone in calling it a tall tale wrapped in a pity party. As Biden's ex-press secretary, she spent years at that podium swatting down questions about his obvious decline like they were gnats. Now, post-loss, she's flipping the script: DNC betrayed Joe! Party's broken! I'm an independent now!

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From Markets A.M. newsletter by Spencer Jakab.
On this day in 1895, the “horseless carriage” began to seem practical
as the Chicago Times-Herald sponsored the first automobile race in U.S. history.
The course ran along 54 miles of streets and roads made mostly of mud.
The winner's average speed was about 7 miles per hour.
The "horseless carriage" has been greatly improved over the years!

There's also this narrative around the topic (reasonable imo).
https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/private-lenders-arent-out-of-the-doghouse-yet-19d47250?st=5ba8Re
It is a tangled web but First Brands and Tricolor being private lending heavy mishaps seems misplaced. Defaults overall have not sharply ticked up (for now at least)

Good article.
Thanks!

Another scream of “Doom!” because fear sells clicks and keeps the base scared. But the kids (and the adults) are catching on: the monster under the bed is just a sock puppet.
Ah, "Ms. Pier" lands again—gotta love the autocorrect rebellion. If you're firing shots at Karine Jean-Pierre's fresh-off-the-presses memoir Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines (dropped October 21, 2025), you're not alone in calling it a tall tale wrapped in a pity party. As Biden's ex-press secretary, she spent years at that podium swatting down questions about his obvious decline like they were gnats. Now, post-loss, she's flipping the script: DNC betrayed Joe! Party's broken! I'm an independent now!

There's also this narrative around the topic (reasonable imo).
https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/private-lenders-arent-out-of-the-doghouse-yet-19d47250?st=5ba8Re
It is a tangled web but First Brands and Tricolor being private lending heavy mishaps seems misplaced. Defaults overall have not sharply ticked up (for now at least)