If easy is what you're after you could always go with the Mrs. Warren Buffett portfolio - Mr. Buffett indicated that upon his passing, the trustee of his estate will invest 90% of his wife's inheritance in a low-cost index fund and 10% in short-term government bonds.

Hi WABAC,
Yes, the wife is 63 and retired from the United States Postal Service in 2021. Her 401 came from TSP in January of 2022 in a large cash lump sum transfer that was put in Fido in CDs..... at the time...... to work into the market. FXAIX was the only fund I put money in---on pullbacks. Right now, she is happy with CDs and so am I. We don't need the money. She wants things that are safe. I'm the risk taker. So until we get a market pullback, I wait....and look for ideas. I want things easy in case I'm no more.
God bless
the Pudd

+1 Way to go.

Thanks for the FinViz VIX chart. But mine from StockCharts looks different. It shows 1/24/22 high of 38.94.
https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$VIX&p=D&yr=1&mn=3&dy=0&id=p89899821759

SP500 daily volatility is +/- 1% (VIX/19). IMO, people have just become comfortable with high VIX. It peaked at 39 in early-2022 but crash-watchers have been looking for VIX of 45. It may not reach that level in this cycle.

That 18.87 reading was as of 1:20 PM today. I’ve no idea what the significance is. But ISTM there’s not much fear in the markets. Should there be?
Edit 2/15 - I updated yesterday’s quote as the VIX fell throughout the day today.

@Puddnhead without knowing how old your missus is, I'ld suggest that you first think about things that suit her time horizon. Then talk about buying things that she will feel comfortable owning if they go through a bad stretch.
From your comments, that might look a lot different than things you are holding. ;) But if she doesn't want tobacco stocks, then she won't be interested in a dividend fund, like PEY, that holds Altria and Phillip Morris.
In the past, bonds, consumer staples, utilities, and phone companies have been the traditional refuge for the risk averse. Today some might add infrastructure and health.
But whatever you do, for heaven's sake, hold onto the FXAIX too. :D.
Anyway, considering the rest of the M* equity boxes, I would first look at things with three year betas below 1.00, positive alpha, and relatively low standard deviation. The past three years does take in quite a bit of market excitement.
But past returns are no guarantee of future performance. So you're probably looking at funds that will under-perform if something like normal returns to the world; that era before pandemics, inflation, European land wars, and UFO's being shot down.
M* has retracted its threats against legacy portfolios. You might build a few watch lists of things you are considering. I break mine up into sector, domestic equity, and so on.
Good luck.

BAD news!
VPGDX has already gone through major changes. I thought that its current multi-sector form was a stable competitor to Fido multi-sector FMSDX. But VG keeps playing games with this $1.2 billion AUM fund. I recently went into it in a big way, but now I have to think of an alternative. VG LifeStrategy Moderate VSMGX (AUM 17.9 billion) doesn't do it for me. VERY disappointed.
https://investor.vanguard.com/investment-products/mutual-funds/profile/vpgdx#portfolio-composition

@msf, thanks to your advice. I have gotten into several institutional MFs with a transaction fee while at a lower minimum. Adding more later with Fidelity’s automatic feature for $5 works well. Vanguard brokerage still requires $1M minimum. Still pondering on this fund.

https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/corporatesite/us/en/corp/who-we-are/pressroom/press-release-vanguard-to-streamline-fund-lineup-with-planned-merger-and-liquidation-021423.html
or
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/313850/000168386323000713/f24245d1.htm
497 1 f24245d1.htm ALTERNATIVE STRATEGY- LIQUIDATION 497
 
 
Vanguard Alternative Strategies Fund
Supplement Dated February 14, 2023, to the Prospectus and Summary Prospectus Dated February 25, 2022
Important Changes to Vanguard Alternative Strategies Fund (the Fund)
 
On February 14, 2023, the board of trustees of the Fund approved a proposal to liquidate and dissolve the Fund on or about April 19, 2023 (the liquidation date). In anticipation of the liquidation and dissolution, the Fund will be closed to new investors on February 14, 2023, and to new investments from existing investors on April 14, 2023.
On the liquidation date, the Fund will redeem all of its outstanding shares at the net asset value of such shares. On the same date, all outstanding shares of the Fund will be canceled, and the Fund will cease operations as a mutual fund.
In order to provide for an orderly liquidation and satisfy redemptions in anticipation of the liquidation, the Fund may deviate from its investment objective and strategies as the liquidation date approaches.
Prior to the liquidation, the Fund may declare and pay its shareholders of record one or more dividends or other distributions of its investment company taxable income and may (but is not expected to) declare and pay shareholders of record one or more distributions of its net realized capital gains.
The liquidation and dissolution are not expected to result in income tax liability for the Fund. The Fund may pay its liquidating distribution in more than one installment. Any liquidation proceeds paid to shareholders should generally be treated as received in exchange for their shares and will therefore generally give rise to a capital gain or loss, depending on their basis in the shares. Shareholders should consult their own tax advisors about any tax liability resulting from the receipt of liquidation proceeds.

https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/corporatesite/us/en/corp/who-we-are/pressroom/press-release-vanguard-to-streamline-fund-lineup-with-planned-merger-and-liquidation-021423.html
or
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/889519/000168386323000714/f24283d1.htm
497 1 f24283d1.htm VANGUARD MANAGED ALLOCATION FUND MERGER
Vanguard Managed Allocation Fund
Supplement Dated February 14, 2023, to the Prospectus
Reorganization of Vanguard Managed Allocation Fund into Vanguard LifeStrategy® Moderate Growth Fund
The Board of Trustees of Vanguard Valley Forge Funds (the Trust) has approved an agreement and plan of reorganization (the Agreement) whereby Vanguard Managed Allocation Fund, a series of the Trust, would be reorganized with and into Vanguard LifeStrategy Moderate Growth Fund, a series of Vanguard STAR® Funds.
The reorganization will consolidate the assets of the Funds and allow the Managed Allocation Fund shareholders to become shareholders of a significantly larger fund with a similar investment objective and lower expenses. The Board of the Trust along with the Board of Vanguard STAR Funds, after careful consideration, unanimously approved the Agreement, each concluding that the reorganization is in the best interests of their respective Fund and that the interests of the shareholders of each Fund will not be diluted as a result of the reorganization.
The reorganization does not require shareholder approval and is expected to close on or about May 19, 2023. Prior to the closing, shareholders of the Managed Allocation Fund will receive a combined Information Statement/Prospectus, which will describe the reorganization, provide a description of the LifeStrategy Moderate Growth Fund, and include a comparison of the Funds. At the closing, shareholders will receive Investor Shares of the LifeStrategy Moderate Growth Fund in exchange for their Managed Allocation Fund Investor Shares, and after the closing, the Managed Allocation Fund will have no remaining assets and will be dissolved.
The Managed Allocation Fund will restructure its portfolio in anticipation of the reorganization and is expected to deviate from its investment objective and strategies. Since the portfolio transition period may take a significant amount of time, there may be times when the Managed Allocation Fund is holding large amounts of uninvested cash. This may negatively impact the Managed Allocation Fund's performance.
Although we anticipate that the reorganization will qualify as a tax-free reorganization under the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, as amended, the reorganization will have tax consequences for certain shareholders. It is expected that approximately 47% of the Managed Allocation Fund's portfolio assets will be sold in advance of the reorganization in order to align the holdings of the Managed Allocation Fund with the holdings of the LifeStrategy Moderate Growth Fund. It is also expected that the Managed Allocation Fund will experience shareholder redemptions prior to the reorganization. In addition, Vanguard Alternative Strategies Fund, an underlying fund in which the Managed Allocation Fund invests, is scheduled to liquidate on or about April 19, 2023, which will also be treated as a sale of portfolio assets by the Managed Allocation Fund.
When the sale of portfolio assets occurs at a price in excess of the initial purchase price, the transaction results in capital gains. As a result of the expected sales of approximately 47% of the Managed Allocation Fund's assets plus the liquidation of Vanguard Alternative Strategies Fund as well as any additional sales required to satisfy shareholder redemptions, the Managed Allocation Fund is expected to realize capital gains, which must be distributed along with any undistributed net income to the then-current shareholders prior to the consummation of the reorganization. For example, if the Managed Allocation Fund had sold the approximately 47% of its portfolio assets on January 31, 2023, the Managed Allocation Fund would have realized net capital gains of approximately $75 million, representing approximately 6% of the Fund's net assets or approximately $1.00 per share. The actual pre-reorganization capital gain distribution could be lower or higher and, while unlikely, could be substantially higher than such amount. For comparison, the Managed Allocation Fund's capital gains distributions have historically ranged from 0%-6.2% of NAV. The final distribution amount will be dependent on certain factors, including market performance and shareholder redemption activity. Gain distributions will be taxable to shareholders who hold their shares in taxable accounts.
Shareholders should contact their tax advisors concerning the tax consequences of the reorganization and evaluate their individual cost basis and any potential tax liability resulting from investment decisions related to the reorganization, including redeeming their Managed Allocation Fund shares or exchanging them for shares of another fund prior to the consummation of the reorganization.
Closed to New Accounts
Effective immediately, the Managed Allocation Fund is closed to new accounts, and it will stop accepting purchase requests from existing accounts shortly before the reorganization.
© 2023 The Vanguard Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
PS 1498B 022023
Vanguard Marketing Corporation, Distributor....

https://www.invesco.com/us-rest/contentdetail?contentId=067257c5-8d2f-41c8-9293-c5ae4a3faf66&dnsName=us&title=invesco-developing-markets-fund-to-reopen
or
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/826644/000119312523037648/d458668d497.htm
SUPPLEMENT DATED FEBRUARY 14, 2023 TO THE
CURRENT STATUTORY PROSPECTUS FOR:
Invesco Developing Markets Fund
(the “Fund”)
This supplement amends the Statutory Prospectus of the above referenced Fund and is in addition to any other supplement(s), unless otherwise specified. You should read this supplement in conjunction with the Statutory Prospectus, as supplemented, and retain it for future reference.
Effective as of the open of business on February 28, 2023:
The following sentence is deleted from the front cover: “The Fund has limited public sales of its shares to certain investors.”
Additionally, the information appearing under the heading “Other Information – Limited Fund Offering” is deleted in its entirety.

I-Bonds use 6-mo change in unadjusted CPI for their May 1 & November 1 announcements. That is definitely collapsing on May 1.
TIPS use monthly CPI changes with 2-mo lag. How is that looking now?
I am definitely skipping I-Bonds, but I am still evaluating 5-yr TIPS.

Thank you Lewis. Despite my apparently long winded posts, I have been trying to be somewhat terse. In doing so, I jettisoned nuance.
We're not even in a once in a century pandemic; we're in the middle of at least two. But that's not popular impression, so I didn't go down that rabbit hole. The HIV pandemic never ended; it just being controlled in some countries.
Read in context, my expectations about future pandemics also include economic impact. Supply chains are being modified; responses to pandemics are being studied and enhanced. Will there be another pandemic that will create a similar one month jolt to the stock markets anytime soon? I doubt it.
Will "serious pandemics [] now occur more frequently"? We can both rattle off a slew of reasons: biological, technological, political, sociological. Does this present investing opportunities as well as reason for caution. Yes.
I have problems intellectually with simplistic rules-base systems that may not be able to adapt to changing conditions.
I agree, and feel that "smart beta" was overhyped. IMHO the middle ground is, or should be, quant funds. They are rule-based but supposedly ever changing by quant managers. Unfortunately, much of what I've seen suggests that the quant managers, while not quite one trick ponies, seem limited in their ability to adapt. After enough time, conditions may change more than their models can stretch.
Maybe that's no different from saying that active fund managers are better in some markets than with others.

Global hybrids are difficult to find. Two good ones are SGENX & TIBAX, both no-load/NTF at Fido & Schwab. TIBAX also has an unleveraged CEF cousin TBLD that can be bought anywhere.

The cheaper TIBIX share class can be purchased (with a TF) in a Fidelity IRA with a $2500 min. It can be worth the fee if you're planning to hold the fund for a few years. And via Fidelity's automatic investment system, it should be possible to buy additional shares with just a $5 fee.
Fidelity comparison of TIBIX and TIBAX

Some things can appear so obvious that they become difficult to explain, yet be so unclear to others. I watched an economics teacher struggle to explain something having to do with averages, I forget what. As a 3rd party observer, these different perspectives were visible to me. Perhaps what is happening here is like that and I'm not explaining things well.
I wrote: there's a tendency for people to look at "what have you done for me lately" even when trying not to - sometimes it's baked into the numbers.
Here's a paragraph from CBS News describing how "what have you done for me lately" is baked into M*'s ratings. On the surface, it looks like M* is biasing its ratings toward long term performance, because it weights 10 year performance at 50%, while weighting 5 year performance at 30%, and 3 year performance at just 20%. But something else is going on.

Obviously, the past three years account for 30 percent of the past ten years, which means that they account for 15 percent of the overall rating (30 percent X 50 percent). They account for 18 percent of the five-year rating (60 percent X 30 percent); and 100 percent of the three-year rating. Sum them all up, and we find that the past three years account for 53 percent of a fund's overall long-term rating.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/whats-right-and-whats-wrong-with-morningstar-fund-ratings/
There's a similar problem in looking at good 1/3/5/10 year figures and concluding that performance is somewhat uniformly good, especially over longer terms. The final year's performance is influencing (I would say skewing) all the numbers. We saw this effect clearly (though with respect to bad, not good, performance) in figures published after March 2020. Suddenly good (and not so good) funds looked terrible, even long term.
Now I'm not expecting another once in a century pandemic anytime soon, nor do I think that nothing has been done to make economies more robust. So I'm inclined to discount (but not ignore) 2020 figures to the extent that they distort averages.

FRED has updated too.
CPI, Adjusted, Annual Changes https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=100km
CPI, Unadjusted, Annual Changes https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=100km
For definitive I-Bond rates on May 1, we have to wait for 2 more CPI reports.

>> what have you done lately
? SCHD longterm performance shows this is, again, a rather misleading way to put it.
>> Had you looked at the same figures at another point in time,
sure, cherrypick away

You pick one trading day out of 2800+ and I'm the one cherry picking?
I looked at the long term (read lifetime) performance of SCHD on every trading day since inception and found that on most of them, its long term performance was superior to that of FXAIX. At least by eyeballing it.
The easiest way to see this is to plot the two over SCHD's lifetime, and note that there are long (multi-year) runs where FXAIX's cumulative performance exceeds that of SCHD:
11/2/13 - 2/5/16 (2¼ years), 7/27/16 - 5/12/21 (4¾ years).
Here's Portfolio Visualizer's graph. You won't get quite the same detail I'm providing (gory details below). The PV graph looks as though FXAIX led the whole way until five months ago. Though that's not far off from what happened.
FXAIX outperformed SCHD for virtually its whole life until five months ago. Are those few recent months supposed to stand in for long term performance?
When you talk about cherry picking, recognize that if one were to pick a date at random, much more likely than not, FXAIX would have outperformed SCHD to that point in time.

>> that we can expect, or at least hope for, another huge year (relatively speaking) for SCHD in the future? One that will make up for its typical slightly underperforming years?
and now you make it sound like SCHD is more this volatile / Heebnerlike instrument.

I'm looking not at SCHD, but the difference in annual returns between the two funds. This has got little to do with volatility of either component, but of volatility of their correlation.
If, for example, you take two share classes of the same, wildly volatile fund, differing only in ERs, then the volatility of the gap in performances will be zero.
The difference in annual returns ranges in magnitude between a half percent (0.52%) and 4½ percent (4.59%) except for 2022, when the difference in performance is more than triple the next largest annual difference. In the "biz" we call that an outlier.
Lewis linked to a couple of pieces that suggest an explanation for this outlier. Assuming you buy the reasoning, the question for you is whether you believe similar conditions (with similar results) will happen again.
11/1/11 - 1/24/12 - SCHD leads
1/25/12 - 5/15/12 - FXAIX leads
5/16/12 - 5/18/12 - SCHD leads (ends on a Friday)
5/21/12 - 5/23/12 - FXAIX leads
5/24/12 - 5/25/12 - SCHD leads (ends on Friday, Mon holiday)
5/29/12 - one day - FXAIX leads
5/30/12 - 6/19/12 - SCHD leads
6/20/12 - one day - FXAIX leads
6/21/12 - 8/16/12 - SCHD leads
8/17/12 - 3/20/13 - FXAIX leads
3/21/13 - 8/13/13 - SCHD leads
8/14/13 - 8/16/13 - FXAIX leads (ends on a Friday)
8/19/13 - one day - SCHD leads
8/20/13 - 9/18/13 - FXAIX leads
9/19/13 - one day - SCHD leads
9/20/13 - 11/5/13 - FXAIX leads
11/6/13 - 11/12/13 - SCHD leads
11/13/13 - one day - FXAIX leads
11/14/13 - one day - SCHD leads
11/15/13 - one day - FXAIX leads (ends on a Friday)
11/18/13 - 11/20/13 - SCHD leads
11/21/13 - 2/5/16 - FXAIX leads (ends on a Friday)
2/8/16 - 2/9/16 - SCHD leads
2/10/16 - one day - FXAIX leads
2/11/16 - one day - SCHD leads
2/12/16 - 6/23/16 - FXAIX leads
6/24/16 - 6/28/16 - SCHD leads
6/29/16 - one day - FXAIX leads
6/30/16 - 7/11/16 - SCHD leads
7/12/16 - one day - FXAIX leads
7/13/16 - 7/15/16 - SCHD leads (ends on a Friday)
7/18/16 - one day - FXAIX leads
7/19/16 - 7/26/16 - SCHD leads
7/27/16 - 5/12/21 - FXAIX leads
5/13/21 - one day - SCHD leads
5/14/21 - 4/25/22 - FXAIX leads
4/26/22 - 4/27/22 - SCHD leads
4/28/22 - 5/4/22 - FXAIX leads
5/5/22 - 7/20/22 - SCHD leads
7/21/22 - one day - FXAIX leads
7/22/22 - tie, Friday
7/25/22 - 7/27/22 - SCHD leads
7/28/22 - 8/18/22 - FXAIX leads
8/19/22 - 8/24/22 - SCHD leads
8/25/22 - one day - FXAIX leads
8/26/22 - 9/8/22 - SCHD leads
9/9/22 - 9/15/22 - FXAIX leads
9/16/22 - present - SCHD leads