money market or 6/12 month cd

It is hard to comment without knowing anything about your objectives. I will point out, though, that Vanguard has money-market funds, so if you want to move money from other Vanguard mutual funds to money-market accounts, it is very easy to do so.

It is.

Frankly, nobody can really answer your question without a lot more information about your situation. Things like your actual "small fixed income", your cost of living, your overall existing investments (including such things as real estate). Your age and how long you expect to need to live off this, your insurance and other fallback plans, etc. etc.

That all said, there's nothing wrong, in general, with good low-cost money market funds and almost everyone has a use for them. However, for even the fully retired, putting too much money into "no-risk" money-market funds and not having any money invested for growth is often a mistake which will lead to longer term deterioration of one's income. Money markets are only a part of a larger plan - very very rarely should they be the entirety of one's investments or plan. (I can hardly think of any such situation).

my objective would be to simply ensure that I can survive on my current monthly social security and small savings and not be wiped out with some big market correction or long duration downmarket which would wipe out my small savings with dreyfus and vanguard

monthly, I survive on about $400 which covers my food, utilities (I keep house at 86F as I can not afford to pay more for electric bill)

does that make my question easier to understand? I hope it was appropriate.

I have no insurance but live off small social security payment and my savings, hope to live of course more but am afraid I may not as I have no other fallback. My small house is paid but I also had to rent a couple rooms to be able to make my bills each month

please see my other reply to Andrew and thank you for your comments.

First a disclaimer, I'm kind of new at this and am answering more to hear other's critiques of my answer than to help you (I hope what I say helps anyway of course. :-)

If you are simply looking for something "more conservative", then I'm not sure that short term CDs or MMAs are the way to go. I expect a longer term bond or simply a fund with a lower volatility would be more prudent.

If, on the other hand, you are looking for liquidity, then moving some of your funds into short term CDs or MMAs would be just right.

In any case, I think you would be better off if you didn't move your funds all at once. Rather, step down the value of your funds over a few months to take advantage of price fluctuations.

I guess my question was too difficult, despite trying to define objective as simply surviving one month to the next on a very small income

There are 2 other possibilities I can think of. Your $30,000 could be placed in an immediate, fixed annuity. That would being in $191/month for life (assuming you are a 65 year old female), or $534/month for only 5 years, $305 for 10 years, etc. See

Your question isn't hard to understand, there is still information left unknown. Do you plan on spending any of that $30K or do you want to live only on the interest?

If the former, then money markets and/or short term CDs are probably a good choice. If the latter, then you would be better off with longer term bonds or preferred stocks.