Inflation is high, interest rates are very low and you need income — here’s an alternative that yields more than 7%

There was a time when investors who needed income could play it safe by purchasing bonds with attractive yields that were rated investment-grade for credit quality. They didn’t care about stock market gains. The idea was to preserve capital and live off the income.

But that style of income investing hasn’t worked for some time — bond yields are too low. This chart shows how yields-to-maturity have changed for U.S. corporate bonds, high-yield (or junk) bonds and 10-year U.S. Treasury notes BX:TMUBMUSD10Y over the past 20…