My future

[MsM]

A couple of thoughts from an old person:

first, doing a hobby or even passion for fun and doing it for a living can be quite different. Be sure you want to ride the horses others dont want to ride. Also be prepared to deal with clients in many, often uncomfortable ways. this is where the advice to be a working student can help.

Secondly, you are likely to work at your chosen profession for many hours and years! It took me a while to realize that it didnt have to “fulfill” me (this is where free time to pursue your passion comes in) but it took a few false starts to realize that I couldnt bear to do something I really disliked even if the pay was good. Life is just too short. So think about your other skills, talents and interests when thinking about other career options. I ended up teaching even though I took a pay cut to do it. I (mostly) enjoyed it and made enough to support myself and a horse and show locally. But I would have been miserable if I was only in it for the hours. YMMV

[lenapesadie]

@LilRanger

She works ALL THE TIME.

This is the ugly truth about being in the horse biz. It is so many hours. No holidays no vacays no sick days no weekend getaways. Just wake up tired, work and go to bed. Repeat.

[Alex_and_Bodie_s_Mom]

Everyone else gave really great advice. I’d like to mention a few other things:

1.) If you have a community college nearby, start taking classes (or maybe your high school offers dual credit courses?). That way, you have your gen ed courses out of the way, for a lot less money than at a four-year university.

2.) Do NOT throw away that college fund! I’m 44, and still paying off my student loans. Tuition goes up every year at many colleges, unless you luck into one that does a tuition ‘freeze.’ A good solid business major, perhaps with a focus on entrepreneurship, would serve you just as well as an equine business degree. And that degree will be transferable to other pursuits.

3.) What you want to do now may not be what you want to do in five years, or ten years. Or even next year. This past year, I had a student - a baseball player, who was going to go into sports management. His path was set. Then, he auditioned for a certain TV show with singers, and spent 2 months in California taping. Now, he’s going to go into a business degree so he can go into the music business industry. I had another student, a basketball player, who was certain to get into a Division I school and possibly go pro - he was that good - until a career-ending injury. He had to rethink everything about his future. So imagine life without horses. What else would you want to do?

OP, I was you at your age. I had experience; I wanted to run my own boarding/training stable. Today, I teach history and geography. Even in my 30s, I was a working student, and I loved it - but my job is much more secure than that original dream. Priorities change as you get older.

[TheDBYC]

@clanter

actually if you are paying $15/hr the business’s cost is over $16.20/hr as the business is responsible for 6.2% Social Security tax as its match and 1.45% Medicare Tax contributions… plus any Federal unemployment taxes (FUTA) and
State unemployment taxes (SUTA)…so make that about $18/hr rather than $15/hr

It is an honor & a privilege to be in a position to create economic opptunities for others (aka, be able to create a steady job for someone else.).

However, I will say the same thing I said to an acquaintance carrying on about abolishing Social Security so he can "invest’ his money on his own, while quoting a Tweet by some moron who forgot that market timing and CAGR exist, not to mention income taxes & inflation & the fact that the tipoff to Bernie Madoff’s illicit activities was his consistent claims of,10-12% returns year after year… If you have to worry about the (negligible) difference, you’re probably not in a financial position to be doing it. Whether “it” is investing your own SS or employing other people.

[clanter]

@TheDBYC

It is an honor & a privilege to be in a position to create economic opptunities for others (aka, be able to create a steady job for someone else.).

never said it wasn’t, I just pointed out the stated wage per hour is just the beginning of the cost of an employee

over the decades I have had several businesses, one was even our boarding stable…all paid their taxes and whatever governmental fees/taxes

[McGurk]

@Sakey,

I realized that I (and perhaps most of the people who responded) spoke from our current adult or late in life perspective. Which is great, but if every young adult could act on the advice and experience of their elders, well, the world would be a very different place.

In other words, I wouldn’t have taken my own advice when I was 17.

So I put myself in my 17 year old self’s shoes. I went to college because it was the expected next step for me and I didn’t know what else to do. Going to a school with a riding program was not in the cards/not something my family would have funded. I wanted to go to the UK and take one of the BHSAI/BHSI courses and that was a non-starter, so I ended up going to college in a heavily horsey area, so I could ride and learn as much as I could while in school.

I was a liberal arts major in college because they were the only subjects that interested me. If I had majored in business I would have flunked out or dropped out even sooner than I did. So if all this talk of business degrees and classes leaves you cold, believe me, I get it. I wasn’t at all interested in business until I had an urgent need to understand the financial statements of my own.

So if the only next step forward you can see for yourself is horse related, I get it, I do.

But I still think the equine studies degree is a bad investment. Can you stand the idea of getting a business degree? Is there another subject that remotely interests you?

Is your college fund contigent on you going directly from HS to a 4 year college? Can you ask your family if you can delay it for a year or two while you’re a working student or assistant?

[Scribbler]

It is indeed really important that you enjoy and have an aptitude for your career. In high school there is very little sense of how the subjects you have to study translate to jobs. Even in college, that connection develops slowly.

I dropped horses in college and got involved in other things that used my talents and made me a bunch of lifelong friends. After trying different things, I went back to grad school in my 30s. I did well and became a professor in a field that’s fully aligned with what I do best, and returned to riding after that.

I was never quick with numbers, and have never had much affinity for the basic premise of business, which is selling things for a profit. I can see how that would be a lot of fun, energizing, but I also feel like I dont really know what most people want. I’m a bit in my own bubble.

The thing is, there are lots of niche professions that you dont even know about until you go looking. And there are lots of fields of study in college that either don’t exist in high school, or are so watered down you could get a negative impression of them.

[poltroon]

There are a lot of degrees that could be helpful in a horsey career later or that are very compatible potentially with a great amateur career. STEM jobs are a good avenue to consider. Some of my friends with graphic arts degrees work with horse-adjacent projects… it’s a degree that has application to marketing and there are jobs in lots of places as well as freelance opportunities. If business isn’t attractive, there are many options.

My advice would be: think about where you want to live to be able to ride horses the way you want to ride, and find out what kinds of careers are in demand in those areas. Consider a college near those places, because your network then will be local. Find out what kinds of hours and flexibility are typical for that career, both when you’re a new hire and also once established.

[TheDBYC]

@McGurk

realized that I (and perhaps most of the people who responded) spoke from our current adult or late in life perspective. Which is great, but if every young adult could act on the advice and experience of their elders, well, the world would be a very different place.

In other words, I wouldn’t have taken my own advice when I was 17.

Winner winner chicken dinner! I brought up the Star Trek Next Generation episode ‘Tapestry’ in another thread recently. The moral was that youth is to be embraced as essential - mistakes and all - not skipped or circumvented. No matter how much we adults would like to save our offspring from making the same mistakes we did.

[TheJenners]

@Alex_and_Bodie_s_Mom

2.) Do NOT throw away that college fund! I’m 44, and still paying off my student loans.

Yeouch

[lenapesadie]

Mhmm. In my work I review credit reports all day every day. A real eye opener to how many people carry student loan debt and at what balances

[Alex_and_Bodie_s_Mom]

Well, to be fair, I got my MA when I was 36. Still. It has taken a LONG time to pay them off!

[TheJenners]

Ohh gotcha! Different than just a BA!

[wsmoak]

If your parents are willing to pay for college TAKE THE FREE MONEY.

I wish I had gotten good financial advice at your age but I did not. I knew I did not want the kind of life I saw others in my family having, but still I made mistakes like running up credit card debt. <---- Do not do this!!

I worked full time starting right after high school and started night classes at community college, eventually collecting a BS in Computer Science 18 years later after moving and switching schools and majors a few times. (Lesson: pick something and finish it.)

Unless you are going for something like medicine or accounting where you must pass certifications, what your degree is in does not matter too much. I’m a software developer. One of my colleagues has a degree in poetry and used to be an insurance salesman. A college degree is a signal to employers that you can pay attention, follow directions, and finish tasks. It’s a chance to explore your options and see what you like and are good at.

Book recommendation: The Wealthy Gardener: Lessons on Prosperity Between Father and Son

[no.stirrups]

I got this same sort of advice in high school, so I went to college and got my degree. (Not business - that sounded WAY too boring! - chemistry) I worked in a lab for a few months and thought I was going to wither away and die. So I got a job training horses. And I was happy. I worked at a few different barns either training or teaching over the years with a break to help my (now ex-)husband start his business. The only time it became really unmanageable was when the real estate bubble burst in 2009(?) and over half my business dropped away. Then I used my chemistry degree for a while. When I’d had enough of that but decided I was too old for training horses I got certified for saddle fitting which put my teaching and training experience to good use. This is the job I will retire from some day.
Everyone knows horses are unpredictable, but the horse business and economy in general are too. I was very lucky to have something else I was qualified to do. I know a lot of equine studies graduates do a lot of waiting tables and bar-tending. If I was to do it all over again I wouldn’t go the 4 year degree route, I don’t think (though I did go on to get my masters degree for some reason…) I think I’d get certified as a phlebotomist or something else that requires less schooling (so less expensive) but is in constant demand and portable. Business degrees are a dime-a-dozen, too, at least around here.
Just my two-cents from someone who is still horse-crazy. Some of us are well and truly addicted.

[Nova2000]

@GoneAway

SO MANY PEOPLE are horse crazy and insistent as 17 year olds (myself included) that all they want to do in life is horses. I wanted to be the next big hunter pro. When I was a senior in HS/freshman in college, that was the only dream in my head. Life has a funny way of turning itself on its head. Don’t marry yourself to a career at 17. Take a gap year and experience real horse pro life. Then take that time during college to explore other careers and paths you never knew about before. The horses will be there for you, either way.

YES. THIS.

I too had similar dreams at your age. I had zero financial support, so my choices were limited. I got an engineering degree with a LOT of financial aid, minimal loans when I graduated. I was able to afford a horse not too long out of school. The dreams and visions I had for my own barn were so VERY different than what I would do today 30 years later based on life experience.

I still want my own barn, but haven’t given up on that, but I have a very realistic picture of it financially. Most of the barn owners that do make a decent living do so because they are run by a professional who made a name for themselves before ever getting into the barn owning business, and they are what draws in the clients. There are several local trainers here who operate out of barns they don’t own or manage because they don’t ever want to deal with that side of the business again.

There is no reason you can’t have a well paying day job and still flip horses. There is a professional at my barn who does just that. She has her own young horse she is bringing along and then always another one that is a project.

Best of luck to you.

[B-burg_Dressage]

Hello past me! My parents also would not let me study exclusively equine science, but not going to college wasn’t an option.

I went to William Woods (I liked Findlay too, but WWU was less expensive and you show in the “real world” as opposed to inter-collegiate). My degree is in Accounting, but minored in Equestrian Science (could have majored, but I also studied abroad and didn’t want to stay an extra semester).

I went the accounting route after college. Bought a horse and was financially comfortable pretty much right away. However, absolutely hated my job and being stuck in a cubicle all day. I’ve moved around to a few jobs now, and seriously considered going into the horse world as a career, but have finally found a balance that I’m happy with. Working for a small company which allows me a ton of flexibility, but still financially stable enough to own our farmette and a couple horses before 30. Now, I would absolutely not want to turn my passion and hobby into a career and put that added stress and pressure on it.

I digress. Basically–can you double major or minor? Do the working student gigs over the summer to get a real feel of it. Think of another path that might interest you–physical therapy would be really neat I think and probably somewhat flexible but still steady income. It doesn’t have to be business or accounting or engineering (though you should take a few business classes no matter what if you want to open your own business).

[wsmoak]

Another suggestion I have is to reach out and ask for some “informational interviews” from people who are doing things you think you might want to do.

The ones I’m thinking of are mostly in the eventing world but people like
Destiny Row Sporthorses – Christin is a pharmacist and for a while was getting ranch horses and reselling them as eventers
Lauren Romanelli does a lot of horse sales and training
Claire Cumbee is an accountant who flexes her schedule around training and eventing competitions

[shiloh]

And where oh where is the OP amongst this positive blizzard of good advice?

[poltroon]

@no.stirrups

I think I’d get certified as a phlebotomist or something else that requires less schooling (so less expensive) but is in constant demand and portable. Business degrees are a dime-a-dozen, too, at least around here.

Some sort of medical tech is an avenue to consider for someone who wants to ride, because it’s a job you can do anywhere and the skills are even useful around animals. It won’t per se top out at a very high dollar career, but it’s a possible place to start and consider what to do next, and maybe find a good horse niche.