How a 62-Year-Old Who Just Got Laid Off Turned $990,000 Into a $6,900 Monthly Paycheck

Five holdings spanning covered-call ETFs, two BDCs, a net-lease REIT, and T-bills blend to an 8.4% yield on $990,000, producing $6,900 monthly.

SPYI leads the portfolio with a ~12% distribution yield, while ARCC adds stability through 17 consecutive years of stable or rising dividends at ~10%.

Roughly two-thirds of this income is taxed as ordinary income, making state tax modeling and Roth conversions critical steps before replicating the strategy.

Getting laid off at 62 is the worst kind of financial ambush. You are close enough to Social Security to see the shore, but far enough that pulling benefits early would permanently shrink every check. The bridge has to come from somewhere, and for a growing number of near-retirees, that somewhere is a taxable brokerage account restructured to spit out cash every month.

Here is the situation we need to solve: $990,000 in investable assets, no paycheck, and a target of $6,900 a month to cover living costs until Social Security and Medicare come online. Annualized, that is roughly $82,800, which requires a blended portfolio yield of about 8.4%. That number lands squarely in high-income territory, so the mix has to lean on covered-call ETFs and business development companies rather than the classic 3% dividend-growth playbook.

The allocation below uses five holdings across covered-call equity income, a net-lease REIT, two BDCs, and a Treasury-bill sleeve for liquidity. Weights are tuned to current pricing and distribution rates.

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Total distributions land near $82,000 a year, or roughly $6,850 a month before tax. Including MAIN's quarterly supplemental distributions pushes the figure to the $6,900 line in the headline. The mechanics of turning a lump sum into something that behaves like a paycheck (the mix, the payment calendar, the withdrawal order) are the whole subject of a free guide we put together here.