RH Digest — April 8th
"The Front Page for Retirement"
📗 e-Book Deals of the Day
The Suitcase Man (DCI Jack Mason Crime Thriller Series Book 3)
By: Michael K Foster
He’s lain dormant for years. Hiding in the dark. Enraged. A double murder soon brings Jack Mason face-to-face with his nemesis. But understanding the workings of this killer’s psyche will be challenging. Nobody is safe! A must-read for fans of Richard Harris, Karin Slaughter, Ian Rankin, and Harlan Coben. Order now!
Get it now for $0.99 on Kindle!
By: Kelly Fae Wilson
A tender-hearted children’s librarian turned superhero wrestles with a doomsday cult, his own identity, and, scariest of all, falling in love. If he can’t balance heroics and heart, this is one story that won’t get a happy ending. If only dating were as harmless as bullets... For fans of The Lost City and The Fall Guy.
Get it now for $0.99 on Kindle!
Want the best free e-books delivered daily? Signup for RetireHub Premium (risk-free for 30 days) and get the best deals from across the web.
Deal of the Day: One Shark Missed Billions… Another Saw This Coming
Imagine turning down Uber at a valuation of $10 million only to watch them go public at over $80 billion.
That’s exactly what happened to Mark Cuban… a 799,900% return, gone.
But Kevin Harrington, another shark from Shark Tank, built his reputation by spotting these opportunities early and didn’t make this same mistake.
Like Uber turned vehicles into income-generating assets, there’s a tech startup right now turning smartphones into the easiest passive income source imaginable.
They were named the #1 fastest growing software company by Deloitte and have already helped their users earn and save over $1B.
Kevin Harrington invested early in this mobile disruptor, and now you can too.
At just $0.50/share, you can become a shareholder in Mode Mobile before their potential IPO.
Have you heard? RetireHub Premium officially has a new look and TONS of new features. A few of our favorites?
Daily games (like Solitaire, Snake, Tetris, and more!)
More trivia! (See how you stack up against other RH members)
Medicare Classes!
Plus? Join today and be automatically entered for a chance to win a FREE National Parks Lifetime Pass!
🎥 Watch This Tonight: The Voice: Battle of Champions
Kelly. Adam. John. All three back in the chairs at the same time. The only question is who wins.
If you have ever loved The Voice, this season is the one to come back for. NBC has brought together three of the show’s most beloved and most successful coaches — Kelly Clarkson, Adam Levine, and John Legend — for a season they are calling Battle of Champions, because every single coach in those spinning chairs is a previous winner. Between them they have coached eight Voice champions. The competition among the coaches alone is worth the price of admission.
The format has been freshened up with new twists at every round, including an All-Star Competition that brings back fan favorites from previous seasons, and a new live studio voting block of super fans and past Voice artists who help decide the outcome in real time. But the heart of the show is exactly what it has always been — extraordinary voices you have never heard of, singing their hearts out in front of three people whose musical judgment you trust, hoping one of those chairs will turn around. That moment never gets old. It never will.
Airing Mondays at 9/8c on NBC. Episodes streaming next day on Peacock.
🎵 Listen In: Daði Freyr — “Hot Damn”
An Icelandic musician who moved to Berlin, nearly won Eurovision, and makes some of the most irresistibly cheerful music on the planet. What is not to love.
If you were anywhere near the internet during the early days of the pandemic, you may remember a song called “Think About Things” — a gloriously bouncy Icelandic electropop single performed by a very tall man in a matching turquoise outfit with his band, which included his wife and a couple of friends. It went wildly viral, made everyone feel briefly better about everything, and introduced the world to Daði Freyr. He has been making people inexplicably happy ever since.
“Hot Damn” is his newest single and it is classic Daði: bright, brassy, built around an absolutely irresistible groove, and sneakily more emotionally honest than it first appears. On the surface it sounds like a pure good-time song. Underneath, it is about the particular anxiety of not wanting to miss out — not because you necessarily want to go out, but because you cannot bear the thought of your friends making memories without you. “It’s a connection thing more than a wanting to do an activity,” he has explained. His new album Too Much, Not Enough arrives in May. This is an excellent reason to start paying attention now. Turn it up. You will feel better immediately. That is a promise.
📬 Dear Joanne
Your questions, her wisdom — Joanne’s here with thoughtful advice, warm humor, and a listening ear for whatever’s on your mind.
For some odd reason this week, my brain had a flashback. Time for Spring cleaning! Then I scrunched my nose up like I always do when I am perplexed – does anyone do “spring cleaning” anymore? When I was a kid, it was a week of my Mom of tearing down drapes for washing, scrubbing the baseboards, cleaning the carpets, moving all the furniture, taking the “good china” out of the china cabinet and washing it all by hand (especially if we hadn’t used the good china this year), and having the house smell like the Lemon Pledge factory. It meant throwing open the windows, putting on your apron, and attacking the house like you were preparing for inspection by the Queen Consort.
Now, Spring cleaning in my world looks a little different.
First, it begins with a conversation. Not with my hubby, but with body parts. Before any project, there is a full staff meeting between my back, hips, knees and right shoulder. Then comes the planning phase, which is honestly the longest part of the whole operation. I can plan a spring-cleaning project for three solid days without ever lifting a dust rag. There are lists, categories, supply checks, and at least one trip to the store for storage bins that will eventually hold things I forgot we ever owned.
Of course, no spring cleaning can begin until we address the most dangerous area in the house: the infamous junk drawer. Every house has one. Some of us have two. It’s the drawer containing dead batteries, twelve pens that don’t work, rubber bands so dry they snap in half when you try to stretch them, six instruction manuals for appliances we no longer own, a birthday candle, three mystery keys, and a coupon that expired during the Clinton administration. You open the drawer and suddenly two hours later you sit at the kitchen table wondering why you kept one shoelace, a foreign coin from somewhere you know you never visited, and the charger to a phone you haven’t owned since 2011.
Then there’s the closet. For me, this is less about organization and more about confronting my past. I find jackets you haven’t worn in fifteen years, skirts that I know will look great if I lose “just ten pounds,” and at least one shirt I kept because “it’s still good.” It may still be good, but it also has shoulder pads!
And let us not forget the plastic bag collection in the mud room. There is a bag full of other bags, and nobody knows when it started. Deep down there is a plastic bag from a store that hasn’t been in existence in years.
The real problem with spring cleaning in retirement is that everything you pick up has a story attached to it. That chipped mug? It has my kids’ picture on it from when they played hockey. That weird little ceramic bunny? A gift from my granddaughter in 2015. Suddenly, what started as cleaning turns into a three-hour sentimental parade, and now I’m not organizing, I’m time traveling.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, I sit down “just for a minute.” That, friends, is how my Spring cleaning ends.
Still, retirees do make progress. Maybe not in the dramatic, top-to-bottom, bleach-and-buckets way we once did, but in a wiser, more measured fashion. One drawer. One shelf. One cabinet. Then a reward break that becomes a trip to Dairy Queen.
And honestly, that’s fine.
At this point in life, if you cleaned out a junk drawer, found the good scissors, and donated one sweater you were never going to wear again, that is victory in my eyes.
So, here’s to spring cleaning, retirement style. Open a window, shuffle a few things around, throw out a takeout menu from 2016, and call it a day. After all, the dust will still be there tomorrow.
But a good nap on a Wednesday afternoon? PRICELESS.
Don’t forget to email me this week at DearJoanne911@gmail.com. I’ve made so many friends! Plus, the more emails I receive and respond to, the less time I have for cleaning.
Have a great week!
Joanne
📻 Flashback Files
Roy Orbison — “Oh, Pretty Woman” Live at the Monument Concert (1965)
It was written in forty minutes, recorded the following Friday, and released the Friday after that. Then it went to number one in every country that had a radio.
Roy Orbison and his songwriting partner Bill Dees were sitting together one afternoon in 1964 trying to write when Orbison’s wife Claudette walked through the room and announced she was heading out to do some shopping. Orbison asked if she needed any money. Dees looked up and said, without thinking, “A pretty woman never needs any money.” Orbison immediately started singing. By the time Claudette came home, the song was finished. “From the moment that the rhythm started,” Dees recalled years later, “I could hear the heels clicking on the pavement — click, click — the pretty woman walking down the street, in a yellow skirt and red shoes.”
They recorded it the following Friday at Monument Records in Nashville. It was released the Friday after that. Within weeks it had gone to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart simultaneously, making Roy Orbison one of the only American artists to hold the top spot on both charts at the same time during the peak of the British Invasion. The song sold seven million copies. It was the biggest hit of his career and, as it turned out, very nearly his last.
What made Roy Orbison unlike any other rock and roll singer of his era was the voice — an instrument of almost operatic range and control, capable of tenderness and power in the same breath, wrapped always in a kind of elegant melancholy that felt entirely out of place and entirely at home in a world of three-minute pop songs. He performed in dark glasses and black clothes and barely moved on stage, which only made what came out of him more astonishing by contrast. The growl he lets out midway through “Oh, Pretty Woman” was improvised in the studio and kept because nothing else could possibly have gone there. The “mercy” was his writing partner’s habit — something Dees said when he saw a beautiful woman or tasted good food. Together they made a song that is impossible not to feel in the chest the moment that guitar riff begins.
Orbison died in 1988 at fifty-two, just days after finishing an album that would have returned him fully to the top. The song he built in forty minutes on a Friday afternoon outlived him by decades and shows no sign of stopping.
🍽 Recipe of the Day: 🥗 Dill and Feta Egg Salad
Creamy, tangy, and herby — a refreshing upgrade on a classic egg salad.
Servings: 4
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Ingredients
6 large eggs
1/4 cup mayonnaise
2 tsp Dijon mustard
2 tbsp crumbled feta cheese
1 tbsp fresh dill, chopped (or 1 tsp dried dill)
1 tsp lemon juice
Salt and black pepper, to taste
Optional: chopped green onions or chives for garnish
Instructions
Cook the eggs
Place eggs in a saucepan and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes. Transfer to an ice bath for 5 minutes, then peel.Prepare the eggs
Chop the peeled eggs into small pieces and place in a medium bowl.Mix the salad
Add mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, feta, dill, and lemon juice to the eggs. Gently fold until combined. Season with salt and pepper to taste.Serve
Chill for 10–15 minutes if desired, then serve on bread, crackers, or a bed of greens. Garnish with green onions or chives.
❤️ Why You’ll Love It: This egg salad is creamy, tangy, and herby — a perfect bright and satisfying twist on a classic that works for sandwiches, salads, or as a stand-alone snack.
A QUICK ASK: First off, thank you for reading RetireHub every day. It fills our cup that so many thousands of people get joy from our little publication.
As you know, good content costs money. In order to continue supporting ourselves and to continue delivering the content you enjoy every day, we need to pay our writers. If you can, we ask you to subscribe to our paid account (for $5/month - less than a cup of coffee!) below.
If you choose to purchase a paid subscription, please know you’re supporting not only our publication, but tens of thousands of other 50+ year old Americans that get joy, entertainment, financial tips, and more from RetireHub every single day.
If you don’t join the paid plan (or can’t), no worries at all. We know times are tough. Thank you for being a part of our tiny, joyful part of the Internet.
- Jay
Got suggestions of what you’d wanna read about? Let us know in the comments!
— The RetireHub Team