I have a relative nearing retirement who has 20%+ of her retirement portfolio in cash, and wants to put it to work in a careful way. The rest of her portfolio is in diversified equities, heavy on tech (and has done very well). We're looking at a 10-20 year time horizon for the portfolio. Limitations:

- Must have reasonable expectation to decently exceed money market rates currently enjoyed (5.1%) over time
- No bonds (I will try to convince her to try some convertibles, at some point)
- High yield, but with at least some decent growth prospects
- Capital preservation is important, but able to withstand some year-to-year volatility
- Low expense ratios (< 50bps?), if ETFs are used

So far, I am thinking an ETF portfolio of maybe 4-6 names. Some initial thoughts, with examples - a utility ETF (XLU, VPU?), a preferred stock ETF (FPE or PFF?), energy income (XLE or EINC), international income (HDEF, IQDF?). REIT fund (RDOG?), and a buy/write ETF (PBP, RYLG?).

I'm sure you know others in similar circumstances. What are your thoughts?

I can't tell you how many hundreds of thousands of dollars of dollars I've missed out on chasing safe dividend plays as opposed to just dumping everything into SPY or VUG or similar. Probably a different situation than this person you're asking about, but I've chased a lot of the same requirements (yield, cap preservation).

XLU pays less than a MMF currently, one has risk the other doesn't (other than rates going down)
XLE pays less than a MMF with way more risk
PFF pays more but has risk

Here's 10 Large cap, 'stable' companies that have good history of dividends >5%.

BTI - 9.4%
MO - 8.5%
ENB - 7.5%
VZ - 6.4%
PFE - 6.0%
BMY - 6.0%
O - 5.94%
T - 5.9%
KMI - 5.78%
D - 5.41%