Make Money With Horses

Make Money With Horses
By Don Blazer

           Whether you want to get rich with horses or you just want to get rich, the path is simple.

          For as many years as anyone can remember, and even before, the road to riches follows a single rule: “pay yourself first.”

          Pay yourself 10 per cent of everything you earn.

          I don’t want to hear all the excuses about having bills to pay and obligations and being responsible for this and that. You cannot come up with a single acceptable reason to not pay yourself first.

          If you earn $10, put a dollar away…and I don’t mean spend it on something you need or want. I mean put it in the bank…any bank at any interest rate, it doesn’t really matter. What matters, is that you put the money away; we’ll invest it later.

          And it doesn’t matter how late in life you start. The sooner the better, but today is just as good as any other day to begin getting rich.

          Once you get a little money set aside, you can think about investing it. (Just because you are up to the point of investing doesn’t mean you stop paying yourself first.)

          My favorite place to invest is “me.”   I like to put my money into improving one of my businesses…whether it be software for a new computer to help with www.horsecoursesonline.com or advertising to sell one of my books, or the cost of reprinting a book…I want to invest in something that is earning me money.

          One of the worst places you can invest is with some investment company. All brokers, estate planners and financial advisers take your money one way the other…they work your account to create “charges” to boost their income. There is no “free” lunch; they are going to get paid somehow.

          If you want to invest your money in something other than yourself or what you know, seek out an expert who produces something. Invest with a guy or gal who makes and sells something.   You have a much better chance of getting a nice return on your investment if the person you’ve invested with is depending on his or her livelihood by being successful at what they produce.

          By investing in someone you know (it is much better if it is not a friend) you have the opportunity to continually check on how things are going.   Don’t tell the expert you are investing with how to do things…just let them know you are checking on your investment. (And have a formal, signed agreement of the terms of your investment and the return you expect.)

          The next step to getting rich, especially with horses, is to know the difference between an asset and a liability.

          Assets produce money for you.

          Liabilities take money from you.

          Your home, even if the mortgage has been paid off, is a liability. Your home costs you money every month in repair and maintenance. Never mind that people have always told you a home is a great investment. It is not, unless you sell it. And then you’ve got to hope you sold for a profit and can find another suitable home for less than what you just received for your previous home.

          You can make your home an asset if you can use your property as a residence and horse boarding, training or riding facility.   Of course, you have to take in more than you spend, or the home isn’t an asset, just a minor liability.

          Horses usually aren’t assets. Horses are almost always liabilities.

          You can make a horse an asset if you put the horse to work as a lesson horse. If you use the horse for lessons, then you have to give enough lessons each week to feed the horse, provide health care, etc. for the horse and still have money left over.   If the horse produces more income than what it costs to keep the horse, the horse is an asset. Very few horses are assets.

           So now you know. Becoming rich is easy if you pay yourself first and you accumulate a lot of assets and very few liabilities.

          The hard part is being honest enough with yourself to avoid excuses for not paying yourself first and to recognize that almost everything you want is a liability. Can you say, “No” to the liabilities?