Be In Good Spirits. Joanna Cassidy

Bob: [00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of Money You Should Ask. I’m your host, Bob Wheeler. And in this episode, we’re going to explore, question, examine, converse, dig deep, expose, laugh and cry about the money beliefs, money blocks, and life challenges of our next guest. Turn up the volume, listen, learn and laugh.

Well, I am excited because this week’s guest is the one and only Joanna Cassidy. An award winning actress, best known for her roles in Blade Runner, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the HBO series , Six Feet Under. Having envisioned a career in science and art, Joanna has embraced the twists of fate that have transformed her life.

Her long list of accomplishments include winning a Golden Globe, being nominated for three Emmys, a Saturn award, two Actors Guild Awards, Two Canadian Screen Awards, which is the equivalent of an Emmy and a Jordy award. A ton,a ton of them.

She’s got a closet full them, she keeps hidden with a light. This is her second time here on Money You Should Ask. And it’s so wonderful to catch up and see you again. Joanna. Welcome.

Joanna: [00:01:59] Thank you. It’s great to see you again to Bob.

Bob: [00:02:01] Yeah, so gosh, the last time we spoke, it was pre COVID..

Joanna: [00:02:07] That’s right.

Bob: [00:02:08] And The world has changed a little bit.

Joanna: [00:02:09] Was my hair, blonde? I mean, that was a couple of years ago. It was sort of, you know, and anything pre COVID is not going to be anything like what it is right now, because if that was a different world.

Bob: [00:02:21] It was a different world.

Joanna: [00:02:22] We’ve morphed now into this new state of being.

Bob: [00:02:25] That’s right. I feel like we’re actually moving into Blade Runner in a couple of years.

Joanna: [00:02:29] There’s no doubt about it. In fact, I have a call into Sherry, what’s her name? Mrs. Mrs. York. And, and, and I think they should do a Blade Runner series. I think it would be amazing.

Bob: [00:02:39] Oh, I actually think it would, it would. And I sometimes just look out in LA and I think it’s coming.

Joanna: [00:02:44] It is. It’s  here., you’re going to, go downtown, downtown is, is absolutely Blade Runner.

Bob: [00:02:50] It’s a little crazy.

Joanna: [00:02:51] 2019. Yes.

Bob: [00:02:52] It’s a little crazy. Yep. So just to refresh,  you grew up in New Jersey. That’s where your folks are from. And then you moved to, then you went to Syracuse.

Joanna: [00:03:02] I did,

Bob: [00:03:02] Which is still on the East coast. Then you ended up in San Francisco and then LA.

Joanna: [00:03:06] That’s correct.

Bob: [00:03:06] That’s a pretty indirect way to get to LA?

Joanna: [00:03:11] I, you know, in my thinking about this, as I’ve thought about it many times, and in fact, even attempting to do a memoir, I, although my first marriage was, was not the best marriage, I thought, well, perhaps if I hadn’t married him, I wouldn’t have ended up in San Francisco because he was a medical student and accepted an internship in San Francisco, Mount Zion Hospital.

Bob: [00:03:36] Okay.

Joanna: [00:03:36] On Devisidero Street. I do remember the past, somewhat and I don’t think I would have gotten there.

Bob: [00:03:44] Wow. Which then you might not have gotten to LA.

Joanna: [00:03:46] I might not have gotten to here.

Bob: [00:03:47] You’d still be living with your parents in New Jersey?

Joanna: [00:03:51] Ha! Not with them, but maybe in the town.

Bob: [00:03:54] Maybe in the town.

Joanna: [00:03:55]  Actually a lot of the high school people that I experienced high school with are, if not there, in the surrounding area.

Bob: [00:04:05] Yeah. Within 15 minutes.

Joanna: [00:04:06] Close family ties.

Bob: [00:04:07] Yeah. That’s cool. Yeah. We don’t have close family ties in LA.

Joanna: [00:04:11] No. Is there such a  thing as family in LA?

Bob: [00:04:13] I don’t think so. Half the people don’t even know their neighbors, you know, it’s like, if you’re talking to your neighbor, you’re strange.

I know mine.

It’s. Oh, that’s good.

Joanna: [00:04:20] I’m nosy, Joe.

Bob: [00:04:22] Oh, that’s good. Yeah. That’s good.

Joanna: [00:04:24] Crazy actress.

Now, when you grow up, so you grew up in New Jersey, your father was Scotch. And my family drank lots of scotch, but, well, actually we are Scotch, we’re Scotch-Irish, but your family is very tight. If I, is that fair to say?

Tight. Daddy was. That he was, yes.

Bob: [00:04:41] How did you break that cycle? Like, how did you, like you went off and did this whole creative thing, and even when you talked, we talked last, when you had a house and your parents saw the house and how freaked out and how long, like, Oh my God, you just wasted all this money or you, you know, What have you done? How did you break? Like, how do you get out of that.

Joanna: [00:04:59] It was a long road. Because when, when I was married and I think I may have told you this before, you know, medical student going through internship and residency, we’re so poor. I would literally buy chicken necks and cutting the meat off the bones, you know, to make a salad for us.

We were really poor. And when I drove to Los Angeles with my children, I had no dreams of mansions or anything like that. But I, what I had was a kind of a, I had dreams and I had this image of this, I didn’t even want to be a movie star. It was, it was just about the life that could be led.

Bob: [00:05:43] Right.

Joanna: [00:05:43] And I learned that from watching films from a young girl and I just thought, Oh, Not even glamorous, I didn’t, even though it was glamorous, I thought how glorious.

Bob: [00:05:57] Yeah.

Joanna: [00:05:57] They’ll live in a home where you, you know, and wear beautiful clothes. I always liked that. I was always my mother was a fashionista in her small, New Jersey way. And she’d kill me for saying that now, but she always, she was a beautiful woman and made her own clothes and such, which I did as well, starting out.

You know, you just do things like that. And it’s very sort of Vivian Westwood, you know, kind of look, a little hippie-ish, and so on. One of the first investments that I made was in a property up in the Hollywood Hills that was owned by a man named August.
And I always, in my sort of spiritual way, I I was born in August and I thought August, August, you know, and it was on a hill up near the cross in Hollywood.

And also the woman who owned the property one time was Sheena- Queen Of The Jungle.

Bob: [00:07:02] Oh wow.

Joanna: [00:07:04] And it wasn’t even if, it was a little house and it was so cheap. And I, though the little monies that I made from modeling, I thought I’m going to buy that. It was all of $22,000.

Bob: [00:07:16] Wow.

Joanna: [00:07:19] Well that $22,000 purchase because I had someone living on the property and he rented it from me, started to grow and year by year, you know, not very much it started to gain in value.

And I liked that. During the time that I was here early on, I was doing really, sort of big movies. I did a movie called The Outfit with Robert Ryan and Karen Black and Robert Duvall. And so I was in that whole circle and I dated men who were part of the film business and producers and so on. And I, I just thought that life was so interesting, even though I never felt part of it.

Right. Because I still had that New Jersey girl in me. I liked looking at it and I liked sort of weaving in and out of it.

Bob: [00:08:09] Yeah.

Joanna: [00:08:09] I I’ll tie this together in a minute, but I was always sort of creative because even when I lived with my husband and children in San Francisco, I would take my daughter to houses that they were tearing down and we would get bits and pieces from it, like the corbels from houses and we would make terrariums.

Bob: [00:08:28] Okay.Yeah.

Joanna: [00:08:29] You know, and, and gather things around it and build these sort of magical little places. So I wasn’t concerned about getting that. I could experience it by looking at it, participating in it and building it. So from that little purchase I got involved in, I don’t know, I just started getting involved in things and I think it was because I let my antenna just get out there and start finding interesting places to go to.

Bob: [00:09:03] Yeah.

Joanna: [00:09:03] And then I got involved with a CPA who represented some very interesting people and some other actors. And we started a company called Lips Chips. \

Bob: [00:09:14] Okay. Yes!

Joanna: [00:09:16] And, did I tell you about this?

Bob: [00:09:18] Yes, you did but I love it. Love it. I love, the first natural chips.

Joanna: [00:09:21] The first natural chips. And we had our store on Pico Boulevard and had we not gone crazy that, that would have been it.

Bob: [00:09:30] Yeah.

Joanna: [00:09:30] There were Wise Potato Chips wanted to buy us. And the group of us said no. I said, big mistake. We should sell it to them. No, no, no. We’ll hold. Anyway needless to say, it’s sort of went away for a while. And then the next thing, you know, almost 20 years later, Kettle Chips. I mean, anyway, all these little things I’m playing with.

As well as starting to make a little money in the business and whatever, I made a little money, I would put it away. And then I would, my first home I bought in 1984.

Bob: [00:10:11] Okay.

Joanna: [00:10:12] And that was in Brentwood. It was a little home and it happened to be because the CPA had a real estate license as well.

So he did a little double dealing there. And but anyway, I got in the home and it was, it was fun. The excitement of owning my own little home was just beyond. So I started to build on that and because I loved plants and flowers, this, and then I did a movie with Gower Champion. His wife was a designer, so I pulled her in and we started designing this house and making it into something really special.

Anyway, I was there for a while and okay. All the, while the market is climbing and I mean, it had its dips and stuff, but that’s sort of what happened. I, I knew that owning a piece of property because my parents had that, that, that was sort of key. And you didn’t, you know, yeah, the white picket fence great… but definitely a garage, three bedrooms and two baths.

Bob: [00:11:14] Yeah.

Joanna: [00:11:15] You know, that was, that was it. And I thought. Well, that makes sense. You use one bedroom for an office, the master bedroom and it guest or children, and a guest bedroom. That, that made sense. That’s what I had and I, yeah, that was normal to me.

Bob: [00:11:30] Right.

Joanna: [00:11:31] I mean, it was out of the box, expense wise, but I thought, I can do this. I’m young, I have energy and there were many little garage sales along the way.

Bob: [00:11:42] Yeah, absolutely.

Joanna: [00:11:44] That’s how you kept things going. Anyway. One thing  got the other beget the next and the next, the next, in the meantime, I’m making connections. And what was your question?

Bob: [00:11:56] Just asking how you, you know, you got into buying that house and how you had the sense to just like, oh, let me do this. Let me do that. It sounds like there was a lot of positive influence from the CPA, from your parents owning property that kept you, because a lot of people would have just been like, Oh, let me spend, or let me do this.

And you actually, even if it wasn’t super conscious, you had some kind of sense of…

Joanna: [00:12:20] Yeah, that’s true. It’s a very solid upbringing in a small town in New Jersey. You had people who were very stable and that’s what they did there. Their house was probably their house forever. Yeah. You know, that’s, that’s how it was the same set of bedroom furniture.

I, that was not my ilk because I was already doing art with my furniture. And then I was meeting artists and I was selling art in between all this. So there were money flows. There were money avenues, down, which I, I, I could take, I just kept it moving. And then in in 1982, I did Blade Runner,

Bob: [00:13:01] Right.

Joanna: [00:13:01] And then, you know, all bets were off. I started working and making some really good money and I had two children and I wanted to put them in a place that was solid.

Bob: [00:13:13] Yeah.

Joanna: [00:13:14] Where we felt that we could come, could come home to every night. I didn’t want to be in an apartment. I had lived in apartments with my ex when he was in Washington, DC doing preventive medicine.

And so I wanted a yard. I’ve wanted an animal. I had that, you know, version of what it should be to be a family.

Bob: [00:13:35] Yeah. And did you get the animal?

Joanna: [00:13:37] Oh sure. Oh yes. Joe Cocker.

Bob: [00:13:39] Oh, Joe Cocker. I’m guessing he was a cocker spaniel.

Joanna: [00:13:43] Yes. He was. And he sang too.

Bob: [00:13:47] Oh, there you go. But they don’t, they don’t tell you when you’re getting the, I was reading about the puppy closer sale.

You know, when you get the puppy, they don’t tell you you’re going to be cleaning up poop forever. They’re going to tear up the house, all those things. You can’t take…

Joanna: [00:14:01] They don’t tell you that when you have a child either.

Bob: [00:14:04] That’s right. You might send them back, but that’s the thing. The kids just sort of, sort of have to keep them.

Joanna: [00:14:09] Yeah, you kind of have to keep them.

Bob: [00:14:11] Okay. So you had the house, you had the puppy, you had the kids. What kind of car do you drive now? I mean, I mean, you probably have the car then, but what kind of car do you have now and how did you decide to buy that car?

Joanna: [00:14:21] I had a, when I drove down from San Francisco I had a Pinto.

Bob: [00:14:25] Oh, I know Pinto.

Joanna: [00:14:28] Do you remember that?

Bob: [00:14:30] Yes. I have some sad stories about a Pinto.

Joanna: [00:14:32] But yes, there was one time that I was, I remember when I was driving around the valley and I had no idea, but I had left the back, hood open, you know? Like the trunks , it didn’t really have a trunk.

Bob: [00:14:47] Right. Right.

Joanna: [00:14:49] And everyone was going (pointing)and I thought, Oh gosh, they recognize me. Clearly was not that at all. So I had many adventures. Then I bought Mark Harmon’s convertible Volkswagen.

Bob: [00:15:09] Oh, wow. Okay.

Joanna: [00:15:10] So I had that for a while. I repainted it, put on a new roof, a blah, blah, blah. I had that. I had a 54 DeSoto that I bought in Arizona when I was there working on a job. I have a Lexus now, which I love. The car of my dreams is, I really want to get a Tesla.

Bob: [00:15:31] Okay.

Joanna: [00:15:32] I love that car. I think the lines on the Tesla are beautiful and they’re very comfortable.

Bob: [00:15:39] Yeah.

Joanna: [00:15:39] You know around 2015, the  model that they came out with, was, it has a really nice area down low, where you put your purse,, your shopping bags and all that. And I think that’s the greatest thing ever.

It’s not up high.. You only have a little tiny space, you know, it’s, it’s a really smart car. I don’t know what that guy’s smoking, but he’s

Bob: [00:16:01] Smokin some good stuff. I think.

Joanna: [00:16:02] So he’s done well.

Bob: [00:16:04]  And what do you love about the Lexus that you’re in now? I love Lexus. I’m in a Lexus.

Joanna: [00:16:08] Oh, just the cost of the car seats are amazing. I get into, I’m going to be a little bit of a snob now. BMW cars have the hardest seats I’ve ever sat on in my life. Yeah. I get it. Now, mind you, they stay really clean. I don’t know whether they, at night they have a ghost and the ghost comes in and vacuums them up. But they, they manage to say so clean because I think the seats bounce all the dirt off.

I’ve never sat in such a hard car. Yeah. Anyway, the Lexus is Gooschie. You sit down and you just seem to glide. It’s not an old Lexus, but it’s an older model, but it’s, there’s a little too much sound. So I think being in a quiet car that doesn’t make any noise is magic.

Bob: [00:16:54] It’s magic. Yeah. Yeah. Now I love Lexus. I picked Lexus because I asked the mechanic what car never goes into the garage for service. And he said the only car we never see in the garage unless it’s just annual maintenance is a Lexus and I’ve had like eight of them really is that so it’s, I it’s, I love them. And they are so comfortable

Joanna: [00:17:14] Now, do you have the new one with the fish grill? The big grill.

Bob: [00:17:20] Now mine’s like two years old. And I see, I’m not one that looks at cars and goes, wow, that’s a pretty line.

Joanna: [00:17:27] Oh my Bob, I’m going, Oh, I can’t stand that grill. I can’t stand it. I’ve got to go back to an older Lexus again.

Bob: [00:17:37] Totally practical.

Joanna: [00:17:40] Oh, I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. I’m all about style and that grill just drives me crazy, but now I think I’m getting used to it. So I’m sure you have the grill.

Bob: [00:17:52] I probably do..

Joanna: [00:17:53] You have it.

Bob: [00:17:55] I don’t pay attention. I, yeah, I know.

Joanna: [00:17:58] That’s all right.

Bob: [00:17:59] It’s it’s it’s it’s sad. What, so, okay, so you’re currently driving a Lexus. What is the current book that you’re reading? What are you reading right now?

Joanna: [00:18:06] All right. Now I brought this book in because I, I love this book. It’s Who Stole My Pension by Robert Kiyosaki?

Bob: [00:18:13] Yes. Rich dad, poor dad guy. Yep.

Joanna: [00:18:16] Brilliant, brilliant book. I mean, he just tells it like it is, I think with the way the market is going right now. And I think you know, everything was going along. Yep. And then about mid COVID. As, you know, things started getting really nuts with the stock market and all this Bitcoin and all this stuff.

And we still don’t know whether that’s real, right. I’d like to know, but I’m not jumping on that bandwagon yet. Maybe I should have, but when it was 6,000, now it’s 68 or whatever it is, you know, I don’t know what that means is there, they say that it’s backed. That it’s insured, right?

Yeah. Who, do we know?

Bob: [00:19:08] We don’t know.

Joanna: [00:19:09] We don’t know. I mean, that’s scary to me. Yeah. The stock market is scary to me. He talks all about it.

Bob: [00:19:17] So it’s more of a, just informational, not a workbook on how to create your own pension.

Joanna: [00:19:22] It is a workbook too.

Bob: [00:19:26] Oh, okay. Cool.

Joanna: [00:19:26] Okay, listen to this. I just opened this up to this page. It says, “Rich Dad- savers become losers.”

Bob: [00:19:36] Oh, interesting.

Joanna: [00:19:40] He says in this book that you don’t have to work to get rich. You don’t have to work.

Bob: [00:19:49] Right.

Joanna: [00:19:51] I found that quite extraordinary. He also one of the other points that he makes in this book, but I haven’t read it for a while. I think I read it pre COVID. He says that one of the biggest mistakes that people make is not talking to their children about money.

Bob: [00:20:07] Yeah. And I, and I totally agree with that.

Joanna: [00:20:11] That’s one thing that I have to say the, my, my daughter got. Hard and clear from me because I was brought up with parents that never talked about money. It was verboten. You, you just didn’t do that. It was against the rules and nobody knew anything. So we’re like, you know, and in fact both my sister and I had this, we’re kind of told that in order to have that you get married.

Bob: [00:20:38] Right.

Joanna: [00:20:40] Then you your husband works, you stay home and raise the children.

Bob: [00:20:43] Find a  good man.

Joanna: [00:20:44] Yeah. Find a good man. And that never sat with me.

Bob: [00:20:51] Didn’t sit with a lot of women.

Joanna: [00:20:53] Just didn’t quite cut it. And after my divorce, I made it very clear. About money and the joy of it and the difficulty of it.

Bob: [00:21:06] Right. Cause they’re both.

Joanna: [00:21:08] It can be both. Yes.

Bob: [00:21:10] Yeah. And I do think that a lot of people, you know, are my family did not talk about money. And I knew that my parents didn’t handle money well, cause my grandparents helped cover us for like they made the down payments on all the houses that we lived in.

And we just weren’t taught. And so it wasn’t like that they intentionally did it. They just had no clue.

Joanna: [00:21:31] Right.

Bob: [00:21:31] They just had no clue. And if they had money then. You know, Oh, look I’m successful, but it had nothing to do with consciousness.

Joanna: [00:21:38] It was a very limited thinking. It was a real, in fact it was a real low-down thinking. And you know, I, I’m sure, you know, a lot of the history of the Scots Irish, that that was, that was almost chipped into them. It was in their DNA. You came to the States, you were sort of indentured slavery in a way. I mean, the Irish were often treated like slaves.

Bob: [00:22:05] Yeah. And you have to work hard. It has to be painful. No enjoyment, no pleasure.

Joanna: [00:22:10] How do you like those words wrapping around money, painful, joyless, you know, that’s not the way to think of it. It’s an exchange. My parents didn’t understand that about me. I saw money coming in and I saw it going out. It’s circular.

Bob: [00:22:29] Yeah.

Well, it goes out. You’re giving, right? They didn’t see it that way.

Joanna: [00:22:34] That’s spending. That’s that’s a terrible thing. That’s you, you can’t do that. You’re, you know, blah, blah, blah. I’m actually in a situation right now as are a lot of the actors in the Screen Actors Guild. And I’ve been in the film business for a long, long, long time, decades. And I’ve been putting money into pension and health, all these years.

Bob: [00:22:53] Yeah,

Joanna: [00:22:54] Well, it’s Screen Actors Guild president and her minions just, and the Pension people who are sort of, they’re like the semi gods and in this organization, union, have just taken anyone over 65 off the healthcare.

Bob: [00:23:15] Oh, wow. Well, that’s not very nice cause they have a really good health insurance plan.

Joanna: [00:23:20] They have a great insurance plan. And so right now, because I’m, I’m still on it because I’m still earning and but my earnings have, it works in quarters. You have to make so much in a quarter and if you don’t then you’re, so I’m coming up to being off it. And so I’m juggling around different venues that are, figure out where I’m going to go.

And so i’m both on the national board and the local board of the union. I have been for 20 years with Fisher and Elliot Gould and several other big names. And we are part of the union called Membership First. First of all, we want to get the president out and we want to get our people in.

And get back our health plan. There was no reason for this to happen. So in other words, the 30 year old is now enjoying the labors of my, you know, the fruits of my labors. And that’s just not fair. So those are the parts of the money stuff that really upsets me. That’s the only thing. Otherwise I can, I can go with the flow.

I, I, I understand how the world works, but if anyone wants to find out about this, you just go to the Membership First website and go on the health plan, Health Plan.org. And you can look into this because, I mean, at some point everyone has to face this.

Bob: [00:24:49] Well, they do. And especially actors, people in the creative world don’t have a lot of safety nets. I mean, some may have been fortunate to have made the big money, but a lot of those character actors and the staple actors, like they don’t have that extra money. And they need that health insurance.

Joanna: [00:25:07] That’s correct. And it’s all kind of an illusion. You get, you get in there and you just go, Oh, I’m okay. You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re fine. You’re covered, you know, the plan covers this covers that, and you sort of. Go along, but you don’t know, and this is, people have to become very aware of this because yes, the actors have no safety net. You can be working at one point and then not work for years could be years.

Bob: [00:25:35] Yeah. I’ve had several clients who had a hit show making a million dollars a year. Yep. Five years in a row, they go out and buy that mansion. The show doesn’t get picked up. And now they’re living in a two bedroom apartment in studio city, and which is nice, but okay. But when you go from the pool and the mansion but you know, some of, you know, some of my clients, I tell them don’t live off the million or the 2 million, like that’s what you live on.

Go back to live, what you were living on before you got the million and those clients have done much better. Because they’re not, you know, I have one client first year, they made all this money. I’m like, you’ve got $3 million of money you didn’t tell me about. And they’re like, Oh, I forgot about that because I just don’t want to remember it so that I live off my budget and I’m like, well, you’re going to have a lot of taxes on that $3 million we didn’t know about.

And for the next 10 years, extra 3 million extra 4 million, but he always lived on, I make a hundred thousand dollars a year.

Joanna: [00:26:36] Is that so, and you manage him.

Bob: [00:26:45] He did that on his own, but it was, but that’s the like very conscious, because he said, look, I’m an actor, I’m an, I’m a creative sort. It’s not guaranteed. My future is not guaranteed. His is guaranteed. Let me tell you it’s guaranteed, but, but he didn’t go overboard. You know, when he finally did, he was like, all right, I’m going to buy the $60,000 car.

I’m like, you’ve earned it. That’s okay. Go spend..

Joanna: [00:27:09] Yep. Yep.

Bob: [00:27:10] But, but I think a lot of people, they don’t, they, they don’t pay attention or they, you know,

Joanna: [00:27:17] Well, they don’t want to pay attention because it’s very hard to look at the reality of things. I mean, I often don’t want to do that. Yeah. And so I, but I, I’m not like people who take a credit card and go out and spend put 25,000 on it or something I never did that. Never do that. I’m very careful about that. So, and I have an older car. I, I I’m, I. I want that car, but I’m not going to get it yet.

Bob: [00:27:48] Yeah.

Joanna: [00:27:49] I’ll get it when I can.

Bob: [00:27:50] And where did you learn that delayed gratification? Like, was that just something over time or is that from the scotch influence?

Joanna: [00:27:59] A bit of both.

Bob: [00:28:00] A bit of both.

Joanna: [00:28:01] He, he whacks  me on the head from up there and he says don’t do that, Joe

Bob: [00:28:07] It’s got to come and go, right. Otherwise it doesn’t flow back to us.

Joanna: [00:28:12] Yeah.

Bob: [00:28:12] That’s, like, I used to try to be, I was so tight with a buck and then I realized I have all of these clients and all these great skills and they’re paying me to help them.

Let me. Let me do an exchange back. So I really started, Oh, Hey, can you do this for me? This client does my upholstery, this client does. And I really want to do like, make it circular instead of me just trying to hold every dollar that everybody else is bringing through.

Joanna: [00:28:38] Right. That’s, I think that’s very,  bartering. Yeah. I mean, it’s. It’s clever.

Bob: [00:28:44] It’s a good, it’s a good thing. What are your worries now? What financial worries do you have? You’ve done all these different things. You’ve got life experience, but is there anything that’s still like?

Joanna: [00:28:55] Yes, I, I bought into, as I was sitting idly at home during COVID and I’m going, Oh my gosh, I’m bored. Maybe I should learn more about stocks because I, I had my stock with some one.. And and I started, I thought I can do this. And I got into things like I’d buy these, like The Motley Fool and things like that. And then once you get in there and then you can’t get that until you get into this.

Bob: [00:29:28] Right.

Joanna: [00:29:28] So then you have to pay for that. And then it’s well, but if you pay this, then you have the… you know what I mean? I didn’t go that far because that’s, I mean, that’s like psychic craziness to me.

Bob: [00:29:38] Yeah.

Joanna: [00:29:39] The thing that bothers me about the world right now. And about is, as I mentioned before all this I, I think we don’t know where we are right now, but the money thing, we don’t know which way we’re going to go with that.

So it scares me when I read or read about, well, blah, blah, blah, bought the a hundred thousand bitcoins are what you know, and now they’re, they’re I don’t know what you call them Gen X or not millennials,

The young ones.

Now they’re all going to be millionaires. And pretty soon a millionaire is going to be nothing. You have to be a billionaire and I’m going, Oh my God, I can’t, I can’t keep up with this. Yeah. That puts me in terrible turmoil. Yeah. I don’t like that. That scares me because when it’s going so fast, I it’s, to me, I, I like to take my time with things and I, I like to sit down at a table. I can’t sit at a computer and bang all this stuff out.

I’m I’m not, you know, I’m not, con I’m somewhat computer savvy, but I’m not brilliant at it. Like some people just go on and do like that. And I, I, just, to me, that’s all in the air. Yeah, that just doesn’t mean anything to me. And I don’t know where to go with that.

Bob: [00:31:04] So, no, I think that’s hard. I mean, even it’s interesting. My business partner and I were talking about, even in accounting, a lot of the younger accountants coming up, they just do everything on the computer. So they don’t actually know how to do a check and a balance. They don’t know how to audit. They don’t know how to do certain things because they’re just used to pushing a button and there’s so much.

That’s being lost with all this speed and technology. We’re actually losing a lot of foundational stuff.

Joanna: [00:31:32] I, I believe so. And I see it shooting up onto a level that’s becoming so kind of ethereal, there’s not going to be any groundwork. It’s sort of like the city of New York is getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, bigger, bigger buildings. And I see it collapsing one day.

Bob: [00:31:52] Yeah.

Joanna: [00:31:53] The infrastructure is not there. It’s not there. It’s gone away. And where do we sit on the people that used to, you know, CPAs that used to sit and write everything out

Bob: [00:32:04] And track it.

Joanna: [00:32:05] And track it. My dad was like that. He had papers and books and ledgers . Everything was written up. I liked that, that gave me a sense of security and finality because we knew where everything was.

Bob: [00:32:19] Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It’s, it’s interesting. It just, it is moving fast, so yeah. You know, in 50 years, I won’t have to worry about

Joanna: [00:32:30] Who knows, maybe they’ll invent a pill that just pop a pill and you’ll be around till you’re  200. hundred years.

Bob: [00:32:36] That won’t be so bad as long as I can, as long as I don’t have to have somebody change my diapers or brush my teeth, I’d like to be able to do those two things on my own. That’s that’s, that’s where I draw the line. They can dress me, but I’d like to be able to,

Joanna: [00:32:48] There you go.

Bob: [00:32:48] Not have to change a diaper. All right, well, we’re at, we’re at fast five. So I’m going to ask you, I have to ask you these. I don’t have to ask you these, but I’m going to ask you these. Okay. So we’re just going to have a little fun here. If you came with a warning label what would yours say?

Joanna: [00:33:01] Dangerous Cassidy. Keep your hands off!

Bob: [00:33:04] What, what indulgent, what indulgence would you never give up?

Joanna: [00:33:09] Chocolate?

Bob: [00:33:12] I have some chocolate for you. So what’s your weapon of choice?

Joanna: [00:33:17] My mind.

Bob: [00:33:22] What’s the strangest gift you ever received

Joanna: [00:33:25] A dinner from Chasen’s that was sent from Beverly Hills to Louisiana, and it arrived late.

Bob: [00:33:37] That’s a little strange.

Joanna: [00:33:38] That was very strange.

Bob: [00:33:40] And not even requested?

Joanna: [00:33:42] Not even requested, but creative, creative, but three days later, the meal was a little flat.

Bob: [00:33:48] Yeah. I, I can imagine. I mailed some salmon once through the mail and it got lost in the mail and the dry ice and I had to throw the salmon out. Yeah. Bad. So if you, if you found 5,000 on the ground what would you do with it?

Joanna: [00:34:06] I’d pick it up, for sure. I I’d look around, I think I’d look to see if it was in a package. I’d look to see if it belonged to anyone. I would find out if that belong to anybody and if it didn’t, it would go in my pocket.

Hey, the universe has given it to you.

Bob: [00:34:25] That’s right. That’s the universe said that didn’t need to be over here. It needs to be right here.

Joanna: [00:34:29] It needs to be with me.

Bob: [00:34:30] Absolutely. Absolutely. So, all right, so sweet spot M and M moment, our wealth and wisdom, piece of advice, financial tip, something you’ve learned along the way that our listeners can, you know, just something that can help them, that’s practical or just an insight.

Joanna: [00:34:50] I think it’s really important now that we’ve seen what can happen with food. We’ve seen the Suez Canal be being stopped up. We need to I think we need to go back to the earth more. I think if you have a piece of land or a spot I used to live next to this Indian family and Bibi was his name.

He made dinner for them every day. And he had a little strip of land. That was, I would say it was no more than five feet by 15 feet.

Bob: [00:35:22] Yeah.

Joanna: [00:35:23] He grew everything and it was dry and he never watered it with a hose cause they didn’t want to spend the money, but he took a watering can and watered it. He provided meals for them.

All the six months out of the year, with his vegetables. And I think that’s essential. We have to go back. Land is crucial real estate in some form.

Yeah, absolutely. And there’s a great I think it’s called, Kiss The Soil, documentary that’s out right now. There’s just the, the importance of getting back to that stuff.

Bob: [00:35:57] I think, and you can grow your own vegetables. Even in LA you can have your own honeybees. I’ve got my, I haven’t put the bees in it yet, but I have two hives. And

Joanna: [00:36:05] I have a guy for you.

Bob: [00:36:06] Okay. All right. I’m going to get my bees going and growing your own food. I grow all my you know, basil and herbs.

Yeah. And I try to then eat them so they don’t bloom and die, trying to work on that, but we’re working on it, but yeah. That’s so, you know, the, I mean, here’s the, the thing that I noticed about you is your always upbeat. You always are positive. And maybe like you’re killing people behind the scenes, but my experience is that, like, how do you stay so positive and how do you, I know you go with the flow and that sort of a mantra of yours.

But like, how do you stay positive with all the craziness that’s going on in the world? All these different things going on financially, things are changing. We’re in this totally new world of post COVID as we come out of it. How do you stay engaged, present and positive?

Joanna: [00:37:03] Well, I think it’s, I went to a seminar many, many, many years and I learned something there, which is. If you act enthusiastic, you’ll be enthusiastic and enthusiasm. And Oh, the other thing is, movement. I keep myself fluid by the exercise and stretching and all that. And I really believe that physiologically that keeps your brain up, despite anything. There are times when I bottom out, of course I get scared, but whatever that fear is, I can take that fear and turn it around by dancing, putting on some good music.

It’s kind of simple, laying in the grass, looking at the sky, you know, all this other stuff is BS. Yeah, it’s all BS. It’s all fake. I will say one thing that there you know, there is some fake news out there. Yeah. And it’s news that we receive in many different areas is people’s attitude. It’s, you know, how they view things.

I don’t want to view it like that. Yeah. And I, I have my own way of seeing things, but I’m also, as I get older, I’m also more of a realist than I can actually define what I call bullshit. Basically. Yeah. You know, I mean really, and every now and again, I’ll get caught up on the train of, you know, flying away with our money and all that sort of thing, but I’m not going to do that.

I’ve had a really good life, a good life. So I have those memories and I can bring forth those memories of, you know, how it was and how I’ve gotten to be here.

I’m still here. Yeah. And I’m still traveling along. So I know that when I get caught up, I’m still going to go on. There’s it. There’s always going to be an answer out there for me. I will meet someone and will take me by the hand and say, good Joanna, go down here.

Bob: [00:39:18] Yeah,

Joanna: [00:39:19] So I’m okay.

Bob: [00:39:20] Yeah. And I was like a lot of trust and gratitude, I think. So where can people find you on social media and online?

Joanna: [00:39:28] I’m definitely on Instagram and and my website is officialjoannacassidy.com. Oh, we forgot to talk about Mulholland Distillery.

Bob: [00:39:36] Oh, yes, yes, yes. How is that still going?

Joanna: [00:39:40] It’s going great. All right. And we’re picking up again. We’re going to be in 10 States and you know, that’s a, the partners in there are Walton Goggins and Matthew Alper, and, you know, listen, COVID took a whack at everybody. But we’re picking it up again.

Bob: [00:39:56] Awesome.

Joanna: [00:39:56] So these are those strange little things, I’ll find that was, that was totally beshert.

Bob: [00:40:02] Right? You didn’t even like gin.

Joanna: [00:40:04] Gin. I hated gin. And I, and I taste the gin. I go, Oh, this is, this is going to be a winner. It was like the Lips Chips and potato chips.

This guy had this little greasy bag of things in here. And I said, “let me try those.” And I knew it would be a winner. Didn’t happen when I was involved, but it was a winner.

Bob: [00:40:24] Yeah.

Joanna: [00:40:25] Anyway, our gin, you know, is gin, vodka, whiskey. It’s going to be fine. All the spirits, all those good spirits. It’s it’s going to be fine.

Bob: [00:40:35] That’s good. We all want to be in good spirits. There you go. Or have them in us.

Joanna: [00:40:39] That’s good. That’s good. I like that. I like that.

Bob: [00:40:43] Well, I encourage people to check that out. I also check, check out the pension. The insurance which is say that website again.

Joanna: [00:40:51] Well you can go to membershipfirst.com. You can go to healthcare.org. So there you go. You can go there.

Bob: [00:40:59] All right, well, we’ll check all those out. We’ll put all that up and it’s so been great having you here. I want to just say to our audience don’t forget to share the love. You can like follow and share on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, search for Money You Should Ask, all one word.

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Visit the moneynerve.com. That’s nerve not nerd. Although often I’m a nerd. Joanna, thank you so much. It’s been so much fun and I always love catching up.

Joanna: [00:41:36] Great. Me too. See you soon.