Fans of the Netflix series You love watching Penn Badgley’s main character continue to fall in and out of love, killing anyone who stands in his way. But there’s one question on many viewers’ minds: where does Joe Goldberg get all his money?
‘You’s Joe Goldberg seems to have an endless supply of money
In the first season of You, viewers are introduced to Joe Goldberg, a bookstore manager in New York. As the show progresses, viewers learn Joe is dangerously romantic, stalking the object of his affection and killing anyone who might complicate things.
Later seasons see Joe move to Los Angeles and London. And many fans of the show have wondered where his seemingly endless cash flow comes from. Not only was Joe able to afford a one-bedroom apartment in New York City on his bookstore manager’s salary, he was also able to move to another one-bedroom in Los Angeles and transport the glass cage he uses to trap victims to the West Coast.
What makes Joe’s financial situation even more mysterious is the fact that he has no family money, either. Flashback episodes show the audience that Joe came from a low-income household and was eventually sent to a group home.
Penn Badgley gives his answer about where Joe gets all his cash
Penn Badgley, who plays Joe in You, was asked about his character’s financial situation in a recent “Autocomplete” interview for WIRED. And he was just as clueless as the rest of us.
“Yeah, where does he get his money?” Badgley laughed. “Same place that Arnold Schwarzenegger got all his bullets in those movies he was in: the movies. He got ’em from Hollywood.”
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The actor then got serious, explaining that in Season 3, Joe received money from Love Quinn’s family. Love and Joe started dating in Season 2 and ended up married with a child. Love’s family owned several popular grocery stores and were very wealthy, so Joe was able to fund his serial-killing lifestyle with the Quinns’ money.
“In Season 2, I mean, let’s be real,” Badgley went on. “Making one of those cages — of which he’s made, like, several now — that would cost, like, $35,000, at least. I mean, he’s not paying anybody for the manual labor, he’s doing it himself, which is also remarkable.”
Joe’s glass cage could cost close to $100,000
Others have attempted to figure out how much Joe’s glass cages would have cost. Greg Barradale of The Tab reached out to a company that works in glass architecture to get an estimate.
The cage, requiring bulletproof glass, an unpickable lock, and a steel mesh-fortified floor, could cost anywhere between $73,000 and $98,000. Joe’s original cage was intended as a vault for rare books at the store he used, and he shipped it to Los Angeles when he moved, so that’s one thing he didn’t have to shell out the big bucks for. Though shipping costs couldn’t have been cheap.
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