Other than T-bills, nothing is cash other than cash. One should never reach for yield if you want something cash-like.

However, if you are interested something further along the spectrum towards fixed income, one thought:

The inflation spike is now over. The security discussed here before, WFC/PL, is now looking not so shabby. It is essentially perpetual, but it's not inflation protected, so both your capital (if you sell) and your coupons erode with inflation. However, with US dollar monetary inflation now under control, that's not as big an issue as it was.

Sample calculation: Current MCT inflation is 2.57%. Let's say you think that's about what it will be for another couple of years.

Three year treasuries are yielding 3.89%. Subtract the 2.57%, and that's a real return of 1.32%/year.

WFC/PL is trading at $1261.21 and offers $75 in coupons, so that's a nominal yield of 5.95%. Subtract the 2.57% of anticipated inflation and that's a real return of 3.38%, about 2%/year higher. The disadvantage is that you don't know what the market price will be at any particular future date. The range is not usually too vast, though, other than during the credit crunch...even with the pandemic and the inflation spike, the market price has been in the $1060-1490 range 90% of the time since Jan 2011. Today's price is very close to the average since then.

The past is not a reliable guide to the future, but as an example, it was trading at $1200 a decade ago. Nominal yield on that purchase price was 6.25%. The modest price change and value erosion using CPI inflation meant a real capital loss of -2.27%/year. After accounting for inflation, the yield has averaged a real 5.45% on the purchase price. The sum of those, a quick estimate of the real total return for the last decade, comes to inflation + 3.18%/year ending now. Quite a bit better than 10 year TIPS which were yielding inflation + 0.41% ten years ago.

Jim