Top 3 Financial Challenges for Equine Professionals

With our next horse business webinar, "Smart Financial Planning for Horse Professionals" right around the corner, we thought it would be interesting to look back at the issues many of you were facing two years ago. In 2010, we hosted a series of webinars about financial strategies for horse business owners. The series included individual webinars on recession recovery, asset protection and financial planning. (The replays are available to our members here.) During the Q&A portion of the session on financial planning, a few of the questions were about various financial products like IRAs and Mutual Funds. However, the vast majority of questions centered around the following three challenges -

*The inability to create enough income to save for emergencies or invest for retirement
*Difficulties borrowing money
*What to do if you are over 50, have not been paying into Social Security (or a similar system), are struggling to make ends meet, and have nothing set aside for retirement

Of the above questions, the third question was definitely the most troubling, especially because it was asked by several different horse professionals from the US and Canada. Plus, since some of them owned horse businesses that were failing to make a profit, not only is retirement not an option for these people, it is possible that holding onto their horse business may not be an option either.

The issue here is that if the horse professionals who asked Questions 1 and 2 do not find the solutions they need, it is likely that in the next 10 - 20 years, they too will join the ranks of those who asked Question 3. While even the horse professionals in Group 3 can take action to improve, their situation is a very difficult one that we hope other horse professionals will take steps to avoid.

Perhaps the most important of these steps is realizing you need to have a financial plan and that you can (and should) take steps to improve your horse business. Providing help with these types of issues is the very reason we created the Equestrian Professional site and especially our Fast Track Program, which helps our members more effectively address core horse business issues and concerns like growth, profitably, developing additional income streams, and how to write a business and/or marketing plan.

Regardless of whether or not you decide to make use of the tools and resources we provide, we hope that you will make a commitment to improve your horse business on your own and that you will take a few minutes to learn more about what a good financial plan entails.  We encourage you to attend our next horse business webinar "Smart Financial Planning for Horse Professionals 2012."  This webinar is free to all horse professionals. However, you must register to attend. You can learn more about this event and register here.

*Not only do most of you need a financial plan, but many of you have not been paying into SSI (Social Security) or SDI (State Disability) and will not be eligible to receive these benefits from the government.