I think the capital appreciation (the inflation adjustment) component of TIPS is taxable every year, too. For that reason, people are advised to hold them in their 401ks, preferably in a Roth.
I've had the same problems with I-bonds vs Tips with the 60k a year. And I can't bring myself to buy TIPS with a yield under 4% or so -- think about it -- you are guaranteeing a real return under the SWR, so you've shot the SWR analysis for that portion of your portfolio.
I am pretty risk averse, but I guess not as much as you, Shock-Wave Rider. I agree you should read Bernstein, because your biggest risk over the long run is the erosion of your portfolio by inflation, not capital losses. Fine, lock in a huge portion of your portfolio in bonds, but start to find a way even there to take on an acceptable level of risk. For me, the light came on with the asset allocation approach and realizing that you can have roughly the same return as the S&P500 with half the risk by diversifying. You'll get a little primer on Modern Portfolio Theory, which means blending non-correlated asset classes. My favorite example of this (not from Bernstein's book) is: imagine you have one asset that only pays out on sunny days, and another that only pays out on cloudy or rainy days. Short of a total eclipse on a sunny day, this portfolio of two risky assets becomes a nice all-weather portfolio that will pay out quite steadily and consistently.
Obviously real world is different, but if/when you get over the hump, you have the assets to put together a nice portfolio that will happily throw of a 4% SWR a year, grow (at historical levels) in excess of 8% with a Standard Deviation around 7%.
The dilemma is there is no safe place to earn a meaningful return right now, so the game all becomes about managing risk (imho).
If TIPS yielded 4%+ then 'Game Over', you could snap them up and never think about an investment again. Even there, you'd be giving up the possible upside that is inherent in all these projections -- SWRs aim to show you a withdrawal rate that is 90% or so safe, but many of the scenarios end up with terminal values very much higher than the minimum.
You may never get treasury yields of 4% real -- it is historically pretty rare (I think). So then you are stuck moving into credit risk etc.
Any way I have been able to slice it, you still are carrying risk of some sort -- interest rate risk, credit risk, market risk etc etc.
Here's another risk: what if you and your wife don't make it? Divorce Risk is generally a major financial setback, perhaps the most devastating thing that could ever happen to an ERs portfolio (aside from the human toll). My point is that risks are everywhere, no matter what you do, and the best you can hope for is to manage them. In the words of an old reggae song, "there is nowhere to hide".
I know right now you are feeling very conservative and you should honor that . don't do anything fast. but slowly start to get your mind to come to grips with the eventual future need to start to take on reasonable, carefully-managed types of risk, or else you may never have a positive rate of return (after taxes and inflation) to live on, thus no ability to use your Portfolio to work for you to support a non-work lifestyle. Cash/CDs just wont do it for you -- they can dampen the volatility in a portfolio but they can't support you over the long run.
Anyway, that is the conclusion I've come to. Not exactly what you wanted to hear, probably, but it is the truth as I've been able to get my brain around it. Hope it helps.
ESRBob