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I think you’re out of your mind recommending to retired people that sort of high risk mix more suited for young investors.

When everything crashes like now they can end up screwed.

The trick to retired,ent is being able to live strictly off cash DIVIDENDS and never have to sell a thing especially like now when the markets have all tanked.

My close ended income funds pay even more in dividends during volatility and provide even more cash dividends to get me through even the worst periods of inflation.

Preservation of original investment is a must for me and it’s worked well so far

I like the dividends strategy. But before you think I'm out of my mind, take a gander at this graph I just generated and uploaded. This represents returns (including dividends) for many mutual funds spread out across many asset classes since the beginning of 2000. I did that to begin at the start of 2000 (right before the market tanked when the dot com bubble burst) to show how even if you retire at the worst possible time (right before a market crash), diversification covers you.

I put arrows at the time points of market bottoms for Fall 2002, March 2009, and March 2020 (forgive me Marty for the arrows not being drawn to scale LOL). Even at those times, something in the portfolio is up for you to live off of.

So let's look at the three market bottoms and pretend we were retired and looking for a place in our mutual funds to do our withdrawals from.

Fall 2002:
PRSVX (small-cap value) was up 21% from the start of 2000.
PRULX (long-term treasury) up 20%.
PRTIX (intermediate treasury) up 17%.
TRMCX (mid-cap value) up 13%.
PRTAX (municipal tax free bonds) up 9%
PRCIX (intermediate bonds) up 7%
So yeah, your overall balance is low, but there are many options to live off of (you're selling high by withdrawing from them).

March 2009:
PRLAX (Latin-American fund) up 113% since you retired in early 2000.
PRNEX (natural resources/energy) up 33%
PRULX up 29%
PRTIX up 23%
PRHSX (health sciences) up 20%
PRSVX up 14%
PRCIX up 5%
TRMCX up 2%

March 2020:
PRHSX up 341%
TRBCX (blue-chip) up 200%
PRMTX (communications and tech) up 191%
PRDMX (mid-cap growth) up 188%
PRDSX (small-cap growth) up 118% TRULX (large-cap core) up 115%

So if you can stomach your overall portfolio balance being low during market downturns, a very diversified portfolio can be 70% to 80% in equities and give you enough cushion to live on by always having some of your mutual funds be in the positive for you to withdraw from.