Damn, I don’t want to do this.
Think of it as educating the consumer.
New consumers often price hay, shavings and such and come up with ridiculously low and misleading figures on actual price per day for horse upkeep. Whether you are a BO/BM setting a fair board price or trying to price a lease horse, these people expect to pay what their “research” says is what your true daily cost to keep a horse is. They think anything over that is greedy profit.
Once you sit them down and show them actual figures, they say “ well that’s OK for you because you are rich enough to have horses. We cant pay that and you should not be making so much money by boarding/ leasing”. They don’t get it.
You can’t win. Don’t let this give you the guilts. Particularly if you could use a little help with those skyrocketing horse costs yourself.
De-lurking to say I’ve had similar half lease arrangements in the Northeast. I paid half board and half shoes to the owner for 3 rides/week on a non-show quality horse (horse show lease fee was a moot point). I paid the trainer directly for any lessons and sometimes rode 4x if the owner was busy with work.
I’ve also half leased a school horse at another barn. The monthly lease fee was in the $ range Tini Sea Soldier mentioned upthread and included 3 rides (2 lessons, 1 Hack) and horse show lease fees were waived. I also paid half expenses. The horse had another half lease person and also went in some lessons.
Edit: I’ve seen $75-$100 as horse show lease fees. Plus a varying fee for related drugs.
I’ve also seen people pay per hack instead of a formal half lease agreement. I believe the price was $50 or $60 to the owner each ride. That comes with its own risks of course, especially if the teen would opt out of lessoning to cut costs (in this scenario, the person took lessons regularly and paid the Hack fee to the owner and the lesson fee to the trainer).