Selling a horse: asking price

[disneysteve]

In case anyone is STILL following this, I donated the horse yesterday. Good part is that removes $1,000 / mo expenses from the budget. Bad part was the appraisal was much lower than I had hoped. $12.5k vs $24k. The horse market is terrible right now. So I get $4k back on taxes. I could have sold her for $6k but it would have taken a while. Now to sell the trailer and the $4k worth of gear left over. Making progress.

Tom

That's great. Maybe you could have sold for more but you would have been paying expenses until the. Which might have exceeded the difference. Better to be done with it.

[snafu]

Thanks for the update. Hope you are able to sell trailer and gear quickly and at fair market value. Lesson learned for us all, thank you for sharing.

[klarose]

I understand this all too well.

Years ago I bought a little filly for $1,000, which was a great deal at the time.

I then spent the next 6 years breaking her, training her, and caring for her.

Then I got married, and expenses had to be cut.

With owning 3 horses, and me being the only one to ride they had to go. They were costing a very large amount of money monthly. And frankly I don't have the time to ride anymore.

In this time the horse market crashed. I ended up selling her for $1,500. After putting thousands and thousands in to her, for care and professional training. Not to mention the 6 years of my time that I spent working with her.

I kept my first horse, only because he is old and will live out retirement with me. He doesn't seem to mind if I go a couple months without riding him.

Horses are HUGE money pits. You will never make your money back, and in just a couple months or a year you've paid more in food and care bills than what the horse is worth in the first place.

[corn18]

Sometimes I hate the fact that I track all my expenses because the data show I spent $42,838 on that horse this year. Owning a horse is ridiculously expensive. I am sad that Mae is gone, I am relieved that we can save money.

[disneysteve]

I spent $42,838 on that horse this year.

Isn't it great when you actually become intentional with your money?

Just to give some perspective, the median income in the US is about 50K so you spent more than 80% of what the typical family earns just on your horse. Kind of makes you rethink things.

[corn18]

Just to give some perspective, the median income in the US is about 50K so you spent more than 80% of what the typical family earns just on your horse. Kind of makes you rethink things.

I have that perspective. I have cut the budget a lot to get on the right path:

$1,000 / mo - horse
$243 / mo - horse trailer (when I get it sold)
$1,450 / mo - reduced budget in all other areas

That's a significant cut. I don't feel bad about making a lot of money. I feel bad about spending a lot of money. If we stay on track, we will be living off of my base salary and saving all of my pension and bonus. That's a huge change from spending all of the money I was making. Full speed ahead.

Tom