With treasury yields well below 4%, and even decent corporate paper not yielding much better, the question I keep hearing from my elderly clients who live off of their investment income is where are they going to get the income needed to meet their expenses. Thrown into the mix that, in four years million and millions of baby boomers are set to retire, so they will also need to start adjusting their portfolios to be more income oriented. I anticipate that we will see continued demand for high-rated bonds and, as such, I can't imagine that we will see yields back above 6% on good corporates.

What to do? The answer to that question is more involved than this space permits, but take a look at preferred stock to help supplement income. My buddy, Zack Miller had a nice post about this a while back. The problem with preferred stocks is that it's hard to get information on each issue and the terms of the issue. Also, liquidity can be an issue. That's why I like the POWERSHARES ETF TRUST (AMEX: PGF). The ETF is well diversified as it holds about 28 issues. More important is that it is yielding a shade under 7%. With preferreds having been slammed over the last few months, there may be some opportunity for some capital gains as well.

Living off fixed income? Check out preferred stocks.

Aaron Katsman is the lead Portfolio Manager and Managing Director of America Israel Investment Associates, LC. and Senior Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com. DISCLOSURE: Writer has a position and is long PGF. He has no positions in any stock mentioned as of 1/27/08

Answers Corp. (NASDAQ: ANSW) stock got smashed on Friday, dropping more than 23%. The company that via Answers.com provides users with answer-based search services and also operates Wikianswers.com, which is a Q&A platform where users ask various questions and a community of people answers them, is having all kinds of problems trying to finance an acquisition of Lexico, owner of the Web properties Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com.

Answers planned to buy the company for $100 million, even though Answers had just $9.2 million in cash at the time of the announcement. Skeptics, like my IOI partner, Zack Miller, just looked at the numbers and wondered how this deal was going to be financed, and it appears that they were correct to be skeptical. Since the announcement back in July, Answers stock is down over 65%.

In a note on Friday, paidContent.org referring to the deal financing said, "a plan to sell 14.94 million shares, raising $100 million. But that was based on the company's Tuesday closing price of $6.69. Since then the stock has been crushed, falling nearly 42 percent to $3.96. At this level, 14.94 million shares would only be worth $58 million, not nearly what it needs to raise to fund the buy. At these prices, the company would have to up the offering to 25.6 million, further diluting the value held by the company's current shareholders."

It looks like if this deal gets done, and I have my doubts that it will, investors are going to see lots more red, as the stock looks like it will be heading much lower.

Aaron Katsman is the lead Portfolio Manager and Managing Director of America Israel Investment Associates, LLC. and Senior Editor of IsraelNewsletter.com. Disclosure: Writer has no position long or short in any stock mentioned as of 1/20/08.