re: 80 years old - 100k

Buy her a balanced mutual fund and let her take the $300that she needs from it on a monthly basis. A decent fund should grow 5-7%/yr and she would only be drawing about 3.6%/yr so the fund should grow a little. You can use this strategy as long as she lives and if we get a strong sustained market, she could even give herself a raise at some point. The fund will prob go below $100K at some point but unless the market goes way down and stays there, the fund will rebound.