I would have to agree that “usually” isn’t true in my experience. For 6 figures, trials RARELY happen in my neck of the woods (z3). Too much risk. For any horses I see bought or sold in this range they don’t get sent out without the deal done. It varies greatly by program and I think saying it NEVER happens is not accurate, but “usually” I would say isn’t accurate either. Depends on your local market or trainer relationships, I think.
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I would not call trying a horse at the seller’s property (even multiple times) or at a show a trial. A trial is allowing the horse to leave the seller’s care, usually for a week at least. And I agree that most horses in this price range do not go on trials because of the risk involved. When it happens, there’s usually a sizable, non-refundable deposit involved.
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Where do they get that kind of money i wonder? How do they make it, and off of whom? It’s impossible for me to imagine that there are enough people with that much money to keep it circulating amongst themselves.
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I’m sorry what? I literally said “they may depending on the trainer’s relationship”, and the big barns that used to do it aren’t doing it anymore.
There are 5.3 million millionaires and 770 billionaires living in the United States. Millionaires make up about 2% of the U.S. adult population.
and there are in total just 1.6 million Horse Owning Households of all 7.2 million horses held by owners in the US …so it appears there are 3.3 millionaires for each horse, and I am surely not one of those millionaires but have seven head
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I agree that a trial in that price range is a rare thing. It is also rare for a horse in that range to be sold directly by an owner, especially a ‘prospect’.
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I read somewhere that being a millionaire means having assets worth a million dollars. Where I live, ordinary suburban bungalows cost $1.5 million now, and if you bought one 30 years ago and paid it off, you could cash out. But it’s not going to go very far. You would not be buying $150,000 horses! However I don’t know how any given data base calculates millionaire status. Just saying it could be artificially inflated by insane real estate prices in some places.
You couldn’t live off the interest income from $1 million in the bank. Even at 4 per cent, $40,000 a year (minus income tax) would not go very far here.
That said, the past several decades have seen incredible amounts of capital accumulation by people in tech, finance, and entrepreneurs. And entertainers. Seattle is full of folks who were just regular computer techs who happened to take a job somewhere like Microsoft in the 1990s and are seriously wealthy because of stock options. Like never have to work again wealthy. The past 30 years has seen a huge income gap powered by the fact those at the top have benefitted in outsize unbelievable ways from being in the right industry at the right time.
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well one could take their $750,000 USD to Canadian and become a millionaire also
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This is true 
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To quote an old friend, “I used to think if I won a million dollars in the lottery I would be rich, but you know, a million just isn’t enough anymore.”
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I dunno. But I wish they’d help a sister out here! 
Seriously, though. I often wonder how anyone is buying houses in our area anymore. There are 26 properties on Realtor.com for sale in our zip code. Four of those are priced under $575,000. Three of those are already Contingent with under 15 days on the market. There is only one property priced under $1.825M that is not Pending or Contingent . What is available? Properties priced from $1.85M to $5.9M. Even a few miles east in what I call the “Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?” neighborhoods, McMansion townhomes start in the $600Ks and detached single family homes $800k-$1M. Even assuming a husband and wife my age (Gen X), each working full time and making $150-250k each, doesn’t seem adequate to pay for a 6000sqf house with 5 bedrooms, an in-ground pool and custom hardscaping, lawn service to mow and trim 1 acre, a live in nanny, 3 Teslas, kids in 4 different travel team sports, international vacations 2x a year, etc.
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It’s not, and what I’ve learned over the years is that much of the time there is significant generational wealth supporting these lifestyles. Or in certain industries, they got into a company that had some kind of profit sharing/stock options/etc that paid handsomely at one point or another.
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That’s not the first time I’ve heard that explanation and I don’t doubt it is true for some. Could that really be the case for most of the homeowners in Loudoun County, though?
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Honestly I could never figure that out either, except maybe they don’t own horses or made better investment choices than me (i.e. things other than horses).
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Here in western Washington you can barely get a decent condo under 500,000. Basic houses fly off the shelf at 750000. A house under 575000 would likely either be a total wreck or a street riot would break out trying to get it.
Many people here are taking their good wages , buying elsewhere where COL is more reasonable, and working from home. Many are simply relocating and can afford to upgrade based on what they earned by selling their house here.
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Or both. Generational wealth, investments, and a decent income from a business with a flexible schedule that requires significant startup capital but which doesn’t tie you to a desk. Or retiring early with stock options, or being the kid of a rich person who got into a company with some nice stock options early on.
My parents bought their house in the early 1960s for $15,000 which was a lot for them. As executor we expect it to sell for about $1.6 million. It’s very modest. That is “generational wealth” just from the middling middle class. If they’d been able to see their way to finding $10 k for us kids for down payment in the 1990s, wed have been able to hop on the growth train ourselves in our 30s. More family dynamics than cost at that point. Also I didn’t want to buy back then, wrong time.
The kind of help many middling middle class parents can give their kids is often quite modest but enough to get the kids on a home equity building track. I would hazard a guess most people who buy a condo in their 20s here have a bit of parental boost. It’s generational wealth at the modest end
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I was able to use a 10k inheritance to get an fha loan on an 800 sq foot townhouse in Loudoun in my mid 20s. Lived there for 7 years while replacing everything and fixing it up. Got a big payout from a layoff severance and sold the townhouse and moved one county further out. I was able to get an 1800 sq foot ranch house on 2 acres with a conventional loan 20% down. For me it was that initial inheritance, luck, sweat equity and getting laid off. My place is worth probably about 500k now. I’m set with my mortgage and have zero plans to ever move I want to retire here.
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This.
I’ll stop commenting on wealth now because so many folks argue for their limitations as if they apply to people who have an entirely different relationship with money.
It is sad that it isn’t actually possible to be saving and making right “choices” is going to even put you / us in the same stratosphere as folks with multigenerational wealth or someone getting VERY lucky on an IPO of their company or getting to an industry with RSU / ISO equity that quintupled over the 8-15 years spent at said company (Apple, Google, Lockheed, blah blah)
As I’ve said - those who focus on increasing the $$$ coming in nearly exponentially (and in capitalism no one becomes wealthy without exploitation somewhere in the value chain) are those who don’t blink or spend more than 30 minutes on the decision at spending that … to you & I - feels like it is a serious purchase.
Look at those billionaires at the bottom of the ocean. $250k to them is the equivalent of 1.75 Starbucks Iced Coffees.
here’s the math:
Starbucks Venti = $7.00 (say you like Oat Milk and Cold Foam)
Your net worth (let’s just say liquid assets that you can have ready in less than a week - so no home equity and not your 401k) = $50,000
Iced Coffee as % of your liquid net worth= 0.00014 which is .014 (remember to move your decimals 2 places) of your income - so about 1/10th of a percent.
So what is .014 percent (or 0.00014 of a billion dollars) … 1,000,000,000 * 0.00014 =
$140,000
$250,000 / $140,000 = 1.75
So tickets (to sadly die) for them was the equivalent of about 2 Iced Coffees (1.75 Coffees to be exact)
This is how spending of the wealthy works.
Billionaires can get liquid a lot faster than the average US American so that’s why I am not adjusting someone like Harding’s net worth to be illiquid.
For me personally, I am a knowledge worker in industries with large equity payouts, my boomer dad died randomly (and definitely forgot to take me off his beneficiary list as I had not seen or spoken to him in years) so that life insurance payout was significant even when split with my sibling (justice is served, my father was an a**hole who drained my college fund that was ENTIRELY saved by myself and my mother 6 months before I left for Freshman year, where thankfully I got huge scholarships to cover the cost. He also did other horribly financially abusive things to my mother and myself & sibling).
My partner comes from generational wealth (strings attached IMO) his family’s trust does not include me (AFAIK - we are recently legally married and saw the tax returns this year for the first time) - his portion of large purchases comes (I think) mostly from a trust in addition to his knowledge worker income.
Even after all this - I consider us generally middle class in our general zipcode … in the top 30 most expensive zipcodes in the US.
People don’t often talk about how they are funded - I am very passionate about transparency and open discussion of how wealth works.
Knowledge is power & the biggest wealth transfer of the US is coming from Boomers >>>> GenX / Millennials / Gen Z starting now - the next 30 years.
Also being a millionaire (net worth) these days isn’t super rare… especially if you’re under 35 living on the coasts and own property. Happy to share sources via DM
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