I think I prefer the fixed income approach.

I've been retired for some years since I walked away from a job over company management "ethics." For me, for my fixed income portion (I'm currently in cash-equivalents for my common stock portion), I use preferred stocks.

Fixed income positions will always lose ground to inflation during high inflation excursions of some duration, like the current one, but my bet is that over the long run, the stability of the income is a net good--my preferreds beat inflation during "normal" periods.

I just hold out for preferreds trading in a range between a little below and a little above par at the time I'm willing to buy, having a coupon of at least 6%, aren't callable for at least 2 years and have a Moody's rating of at least Baa3. Then I hold them until they're called. There aren't many of those these days, but there are some, and there'll be more as interest rates keep rising.

Eric Hines