Hi Kevin,

It's me again... I thought of some more things that I could add. I didn't think that my first reply was helpful enough. I retired about 8 months ago and needed to create a retirement income stream for myself. Maybe your mom is in a similar situation.

First of all, there is a very good book entitled Getting Started in Bonds by Sharon Saltzgiver Wright. It was recommended on this board. You may want to get this and either read it or give it to your mom.

I mentioned that I invested a lot of money in single-A graded corporate bonds. What I did was to look over the historical default rates of bonds rated at various grades. Of course I wanted bonds with very low default rates and decided to stay in single-A and above.

I purchased bonds on the secondary market within my Fidelity IRA. That is, these bonds had been around for a while and were being sold by somebody else on the open market. I preferred companies that I was already familiar with, for example. Dow Chemical, Coca-Cola, Hershey, and Chase Manhattan.

These bonds pay coupons twice a year so that I'm getting a yield above 6%. I have a mix of longer term and shorter term bonds. The longer term bonds help with yields. The shorter term bonds help in case interest rates rise, you can purchase new bonds later on and capture those higher interest rates.

Well, I could go on all day about bonds, but this is a start.

CG