Equine Budget Sheet Template
Equine Budget Template
Smart Financial Planning For Horse Owners
Money cannot buy happiness – but money pays for the horses who make us happy. The responsibility of providing for their well-being, ensuring their health and happiness, and managing their finances is a huge factor of horse ownership. Do you know exactly how much you spend on your horse each month?
Our Equine Budget Sheet is a math-free way of getting very specific numbers for your horse or horses, and offers an easy solution to recalculate seasonally, or as you try different feeds and supplements.
Boarding
I boarded my horses for 15 years before finally getting the chance to keep them at home. This still works great to break down your horse’s extra feed and supplements, board, farrier, vet, training/lessons, bodywork, etc. You can input anything you need, and it is fully customizable since it is a Google Sheet.
AT HOME
You can input everything your horse eats, from flakes of hay to pounds of hard feed, supplements and medications. Whether you weigh your feed daily, or just a couple times to get an estimate by volume (aka the coffee can scoop or flake of hay). The more often you weigh, the more accurate your results, but you can get very close with averages.
Multiple Horses
Our template comes with a tab for single horse owners, and a tab with up to 4 horses. You can simply delete those you don’t need, or duplicate tabs for even more horses. If you need help with a more custom solution, we’re happy to adjust it for you – just ask!
No Math Needed
The formulas in this template are robust – you simply need to input what the feed is, the feed type, weight purchased, cost, and if you’re feeding hay by flakes, you’ll want to input your average flake weight. Most flakes weight between 3-5lbs, but it does vary for types of hay, region, and even per bale. All conversions are done automatically!
Why We Created This Template
I’ve been a budgeting queen my whole life. My mom loves to remind me of how she had me calculate the estimated cost of gas to drive me 40 minutes to the barn to see the horses, based on gas prices and the average mileage our family car got at the time. We used that number to determine that we could only go 1-2 times a week. In college, I remember spending a lot of time calculating the nutrient concentrations in different supplements in order to select the best “bang for my buck” when it came to choosing what to buy my horse on a very poor college-student budget. Today, I keep a close track of how much I spend on all animal expenses in order to calculate accurate cost projections to ensure I have enough money to cover everyone.
I realized that not many equestrians have advanced spreadsheet skills, and many are merely guessing when it comes to their equine-related monthly costs. I have operated on a strict budget my entire life, having had my oldest horse Tucker since I was 14. His costs have ALWAYS been part of my own, so I have carried the weight of that responsibility for longer than I have paid bills. I think every horse owner should feel confident in knowing exactly what they are spending on their horse. You should be able to make accurate projections on what future costs may include, as this knowledge enables you to make smart decisions. Financial planning ensures your horse will be provided for, and alerts you if changes need to be made in order to keep you financially healthy.
Brian is much better with spreadsheets than I am, so when we started tracking expenses together our spreadsheets swiftly grew to be incredibly comprehensive and detailed. Since moving & having the horses at home, they are continually evolving to be even more useful. We decided to make our budgeting sheet for the herd into something that we could share with friends, and in that process ended up creating a massively powerful, yet simple to use spreadsheet template. While we plan on continuing to refine & improve upon this template, we hope that it can help other horse owners find more peace in knowing exactly what they need to put aside for their horses.
Here's a Demo of the Sheet in Action!
Ask Yourself These Questions:
How much does your horse truly cost each month?
How much money should you set aside for your horse?
Are you spending your money on the right supplements?
What is the bare minimum you need to support your horse?
The privilege of having these incredible creatures in our lives also comes with a significant responsibility. If something terrible happens, and you have to cut costs, do you know what will stay and what will go? Knowing your horse’s expenses gives you the knowledge to make smart decisions, and when life doesn’t go your way you will be more prepared when you know exactly where your money needs to go.
Knowing exactly how much I need to cover their monthly expenses has helped me make financial decisions at every stage of my life, and I know you will be empowered with the same knowledge.
My 4 Favorite Things About this Sheet
- You can quickly adjust feed amounts each season to get an estimate of what it will cost
- Fully customizable
- You know that your horses are eating enough forage for their size - and not too much forage!
- NO math!
We put a lot of time into making this sheet functional and easy to use. Simply input what resources you have in your feed room, and you can calculate the daily and monthly costs down to a pill of medication… without doing any math.
But this is not an app, you still have total control over how it looks, feels, and even functions if you’re comfortable with formulas! Once you make a copy of the original Google Sheet template, it is YOURS.
