I never invested in bonds because I didn't want to pay the highest marginal income tax on my bond returns. I've not invested in bonds for years - even though I wanted to because of this.
I just realized that I should've just used my Traditional 401k for it. The benefits are that it'll grow tax free. I can just keep my equity investments in a normal brokerage, where I'll just be paying the capital gains tax.
I feel like this is something others have probably already figured out for ages, and I'm just late to the game, but wanted to share to this group to sanity check.