One thing that needs to be thought out based on ones particular income needs is “reinvestment risk”. It gets glossed over a bit being the short end is so high and easy pickings from the tree, but it is just as real a risk as duration and credit risk.
For example if you ladder out to 5 years on say CDs and they are callable, they could get redeemed at an inopportune time on the yield curve and next thing you are reinvesting several hundred bps lower on something you were counting on for a few more years.
I tend to buy noncallables. And if you buy bonds with duration that are noncallable you get your cake or eat it too if yields fall. If you buy callables, you could wind up with fork in hand and nothing to eat. Lets take an example “Back in the day”. Around the turn of century Walmart issued a 7.55% noncallable bond that matures 2030.
Based on what went on, you would have had the option to continuously clip the coupon until 2030, or take a massive cap gain, as Walmart has continuously over the years offered tenders 50% above purchase price to knock them out. If one had bought a callable bond, they would have been redeemed, suffered reinvestment risk considerably lower, and no cap gain from it being redeemed. Just something to consider if one is not cognizant of it.
And each persons situation is different. I got my friend to get his dad out of over $500k sitting in basically zip savings accounts into rolling 1 and 3 month Tbills. His biggest excitement of the month is my friend printing the statement off and showing him his income deposited into his bank account. But he doesnt care about reinvestment risk at 86. He doesnt spend it anyways and would just put it back in savings if tbills ever went to zero. Its not changing his life either way because he doesnt spend any of it anyways.