What does everyone do?

[candyappy]

Before I married ( late 20’s) I had several jobs before being a delivery driver which paid well enough to pay my rent and support my 2 horses.

I married a hard working man and stayed home to raise our 3 kids ( while having as many as 5 horses)and in our 30 years of marriage I have worked twice at the family farm business ( 10 years ( gone for 9) then 5 years again ).

I had a year where I worked at a dressage centered boarding barn and then a few months at a Dairy Queen when we moved and owned 2 houses.

Other than that I am home. We do farm and I take care of things here that I can. Having to not pay board makes this way more doable. If I had to pay board I would be working to support my horses.

[TheJenners]

@Spudsmyguy

I’m going to be truck shopping in the not too distant future

Same but oy it hurts to even look Are you going used or ?

[Spudsmyguy]

I know. Definitely used. The new truck prices are insane!

[sorrelfilly721]

The only truck available in my area was used and it was $16K over MSRP for a new truck.

[SuzieQNutter]

Nowadays I live on a farm so the horses are tax deductible.

It is a small country town and I originally had a job in admin with 2 hours overtime a day, 6 days a week. I was made redundant and the company closed.

I put resumes in to every business before my last day. Nothing. I answered every job vacancy nothing. I was not born here so not local.

I started delivering pamphlets.

I started mystery shopping. That is not much pay but paid for petrol to visit my mum. I worked my way up to the top for 15 or so companies simply because I am reliable.

That lead to doing Planograms for one of the companies. I became a Planogram Team Leader. Planograms are taking everything off the shelves in a part of a supermarket like say dog food and putting them back on the shelves according to a plan given to you. Being team leader and I became friends with another team leader. We worked everything out so as it was worth leaving the farm. We did so many that we actually found them relaxing. She also has horses.

I also started merchandising and auditing for the same companies.

The planogram contract was lost. I stopped doing planograms as I was no longer the team leader and it was not worth leaving the farm for only 2 hours work. I tried working for other companies but the workers were not treated well, as in they would book you in for 3 days work, make you work really hard and run to get things done, then say you got so much done that you weren’t needed the next day and things like that.

I saw a merchandising job advertised on the board at the local Supermarket. It started at 2 hours a fortnight, went to 1.5 hours a week as a contractor and a few months ago it changed to me being an employee and 2 hours a week.

I changed from doing pamphlets in a further away suburb and started doing them in my local town.

When Covid hit and Easter I was downstairs at the local Supermarket and one of the Supervisors asked me if I could help put with Grocery deliveries. I said yes.

One of the guys put the bread up in the morning then did the non local deliveries. The other guy did the local deliveries.

I started doing a bulk bread delivery order to a school camp place. I met the bread people.

I had my eye on the local deliveries job. Experience tells me that if you are reliable and pleasant you soon work your way to the top.

They put a delivery fee on to the deliveries and they dropped way back. Sigh.

I picked up a job auditing Aldis. I do that each weekend staying at my Mums Saturday night.

I started doing a bulk delivery order to a school camp place. I met the bread people.

The guy doing the bread fell off a ladder. I took over doing the bread, another bread company employed me as well. That is 6 mornings a week.

The Aldi Audits changed companies. A pay increase. YAY. There was also a change that I didn’t have to apply each month but are given the same audits each month and they are now my stores. YAY.

Bottle shop audits started again. That changes every month.

The local delivery guy kept calling me in at the last moment, usually on a Tuesday. One day it was so late I had finished the bread and was on the way to the next suburb for bottle shop audits so I said no.

He gave me Tuesday deliveries.

Then he has given me Thursday and Friday COD out of radius deliveries every week.

Then he rings me and says I can do all of Thursday and Friday deliveries that week. That happened 2 weeks ago and then again this week.

The Aldi Audits made a change that I cannot do them on the same day I have done it the last 2 times. AAAARRRGGGGHHHH.

I need 2 days to do that. I have figured out with the bread companies that I have the second morning off and one other morning off in the month I have to do that. I do 2 months of audits then a month off so it only works out twice a year or so.

Now I will have to tell the supermarket that I will probably have to give up the Tuesday delivery in that month and I do the Thursday Friday deliveries so I can take off either Monday and Tuesday or Tuesday and Wednesday to do the audits.

I got a call and now do 2 x BP petrol station Audits a month.

I still get called by mystery shopping companies. I don’t apply anymore. They ring me and I tell them if I can do it or not.

With winter I have not ridden in a while!

[Bebe_Falcon1]

Pre-kids, I worked as an Environmental Scientist for an engineering firm. It was convenient as it was “local” but it eroded my self-esteem terribly. It was a small company with frequent turnover + I reported to a neurotic micro-manager + I didn’t even find the work I did interesting.

I got pregnant just as I was finishing-up a certificate course in PR in my spare time so instead of changing careers, I quit the engineering firm and went on early maternity leave. I did some part-time work on-and-off at home (performing background checks) as well as working the polls at election time until my kids were old enough to start school, and then just prior to COVID, began a great part-time gig as a science educator for a well-established not-for-profit. I like to think it pays for all my horse expenses (which aren’t too hefty, as all I have now is a mini) but it’s my hard-working partner who pays the “real” bills.

I’d also like to eventually get into doing some more painting to fund other horse-related endeavors. When I have enough spare time on my hands (hah!) I get artsy and do things like create three-dimensional portraits of horses (my former gelding, Significant Other, below):

[volvo_240]

I have my P&C license and the class and test were the most painfully boring experiences of my life, I’m hella impressed with anyone who can power through to MBA level.

[Paint_Party]

I taught in SoCal for years and the pay is quite high there, so it covered the cost of board, care, lessons and intermittent training stints for my horse. Then I was fortunate that my mom really loved horses and decided to buy horse property in the hinterlands of SoCal. My sister and I then had a steady string of quality young horses to sift through. That definitely helped.

I also diversified. I started writing for horse publications and that eventually led to writing for other entities like glossy lifestyle magazines and tour and travel brochures. It grew into a lot of work, including book projects, so I quit teaching and just wrote. Then my husband and I moved to Arizona and the last few years-- up until COVID-- I cut back on writing and went back to teaching part-time. That gave me play money for boots, tack and feed supplements. Fortunately, my husband has always been a miser and knew how to invest all the money I wasn’t spending on horses. That really made a difference or I’m sure I’d be a walking example of Horse Poor.

[quietann]

@quietann

Biostatistician at a big hospital in Boston. For now. And quite frankly, DH pays for some things. He is retired, and we are “comfortable” financially, as long as my health holds up. My beloved mare may be my first and last horse.

And now programmer-analyst for a research group that is a joint venture between a health insurance company and Harvard Medical School. It’s a better job, pays more, and I am really enjoying it. I’ve been there for a year.

[Critter]

I am a physical therapist who went into academia…so I teach full time for a university. I actually took a bit of a pay cut when I first moved to teaching, but I’ve made it up with getting faculty promotions and the fact that we have really good state benefits. And, it gives me the flexibility in my schedule to be able to do the horses (who live at home). I can ride in the morning and then teach classes/do meetings. I do work at all hours and way more hours than a 9-5 type job (answering student emails at 11pm is always fun!). And because we have to research, if I am not grading I am trying to research or write manuscripts. So I have no life outside of academia and my horses…but I am okay with that:) I am in a program that is very understaffed so there are always chances to pick up teaching overloads…right now my 3yo went out for training to get started…so I picked up a 7 credit overload for the fall. If he was home and I needed the time to ride I wouldn’t have done that…but it will pay for his training so it works right now! We also get paid extra if we pick up summer classes and summer orientations, which I usually do for extra income.

[jlm0305]

I’m a PhD student, husband is in law enforcement. I’m getting ready to graduate and will very likely be making around $15/hr with whatever job I end up with. Luckily the husband makes decent money for the area and we have the horses on our own property.

[Vyce]

I don’t own a horse yet. Leased a very sweet aged Arab mare last winter, (she’s my avatar pic) and I’m hoping to pick up another lease this winter. I work full time in a lab washing the labware, and I write fiction on the side. (Just some piddly Amazon ebooks but they’ve paid a few bills and paid for some of my college). I go to school part time for paralegal. I’ve got a few classes left. Once I graduate the plan is get paralegal job, move, and start horse shopping. I’ve already started setting money aside for that. I’ve also been contemplating picking up a second part time job with the hiring shortage and Christmas season coming up, seems like a prime time to scoop up some extra cash. And maybe sometime try my hand at horsey fiction (because hey, you never know until you try. Worse comes to worse story just won’t sell and I won’t be any worse off lol). My horse dreams are simple- I just trail ride and all I want is a sound, sane seasoned pony sized trail horse. Gender color etc I don’t care about, but somwtimes I feel I’m shooting for the moon LOL.

[Alterration]

I’m a product manager and programmer at a small company, own part of a second startup, and my husband is an IT manager for the feds. We just bought a facility so the horses are home. I also am doing a few lessons now on the side mostly because the level of horsemanship was fairly low with the boarders I inherited and I was scared of the liability (I taught through my early twenties but gave it up as a career path). I work, in some capacity or another, pretty much all the time because my kids are in college and I’m paying for them as well as everything else (since the financial aid goes based on the income of the parents, regardless of whether the children are independent or not, I cannot transfer that responsibility to them). I’ll probably never get to retire, but I suppose that’s the way of it for us younger GenXers. I’m just hoping to stay relevant and continue being as creative as I can be with making money.

[Miss_Motivation]

This is always an interesting topic.

I have a 60 horse boarding stable that tries to break even, but it does absorb the relatively modest costs of my two horses.

Before that I had an equine product manufacturing company for many, many years that also provided a good connection for horse write-offs.

But my day to day expenses are paid from payments on a mortgage I hold, from selling the small commercial building I bought to house the aforementioned equine products company.

As my mom used to say “I never made any money working, but I always made money owning property.” She was right…!