Hilary Moore, Dressage Trainer
  • Home
  • About Hilary
  • Services
    • Training & Instruction
      • Judging
        • Virtual Coaching
          • Clinics
          • Testimonials
          • Show Results
          • In the News
          • Calendar
          • Blog
          • For Sale
          • Contact
          The cost of riding 07/20/2009
          0 Comments
           

          We all joke about how expensive this sport is, but I really started thinking about your typical Annie Newbie-Trainer and young adult amateur, Sarah Former-Young Rider.

          Lets say that Annie is teaching lessons at $50/45 minutes. If she has a horse of her own and boards him, that is about $12,000 a year in costs and about $1500 a year in showing fees for the minimum to qualify and get to Regional Championships. Say her rent is $12,000 a year with utilities and her car costs her $6,000 a year in gas, maintenance and insurance. Food is $3600 a year. $2,000 in replacement equipment (boots, gloves, breeches) and $6,000 in health insurance that she has to cover herself.
          If Annie needs $43,100 to simply survive and have 1 horse to campaign, she needs to teach 17 lessons a week without a week off just to survive. More, if she discounts the lessons for "training packages".

          I did not count training for her own horse and paying a trainer to help her throughout the week, which is another $15,000 or so a year in fees.

          Sarah Former-Young Rider also has this issue, since her horse is now ready to go Grand Prix and she is probably working as a paralegal to get ready for law school. She has company health insurance, but other expenses related to driving 1.5 hours to get to the barn out in a rural area.

          So here we are, both need about $58,100 to have 1 competition horse that is showing as little as possible. The horse and rider cannot get hurt,  both need to make more than $60,000 a year from work if they want to eat out or take a vacation or buy street clothing anytime soon.

          I have to say, I am shocked that there are so many people that are able to do this... because I assume that not everyone is living off of a trust fund.

          I think that this is a great argument for more sponsorship/grants for riders in their twenties and early thirties... because there really is not much out there!

           


          Comments




          Leave a Reply

            RSS Feed

            Click to set custom HTML

            Archives

            September 2011
            May 2010
            April 2010
            March 2010
            February 2010
            November 2009
            October 2009
            August 2009
            July 2009
            June 2009
            May 2009
            April 2009
            March 2009
            February 2009
            January 2009
            November 2008


          Create a free website with Weebly