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Some Spending Mistakes to Avoid

Original article written by Dave Laser posted 10 years 3 weeks ago

I’ll start this off with something that I tell my kids all the time, “Do as I say, not as I do!” Hopefully, you won’t make the same mistakes I made managing my bankroll early in your Sim career.

As a new player you are given a healthy bank account of $100,000 with the promise of another $150,000 disbursed in set amounts over the following 10 weeks (75k in week 2, 50 in week six and finally 25k week 10). It sure sounds like a lot of money, and it is, if you are vigilant with your spending.
Most of the articles written for new players mention, in one way or another, the importance of being patient as you are playing. This is especially true when deciding how to spend your money when first starting out. Costs are negligible early on but the longer you play the game, the more expensive if gets. For instance, starting out there are no daily or weekly costs associated with your horses, but later on you will be paying not only a $5 per horse daily fee but a weekly boarding fee with those costs based on where you are boarding the horses in your stable. For instance, I am now considered to have intermediate status and my costs are $750 daily plus $750 once a week for boarding (I currently have 150 horses).

One of my early mistakes was thinking that after reading a few articles and browsing thru the help pages that it would be easy to buy a horse off of the New Player sales page for cheap, and drop it into a race and get an easy win and the money would start to roll in. So I bought a lot of horses for $100 or $1. It was easy and I could afford it, but I didn’t take into account the shipping fees and stakes entries fees. I found out that there’s a reason that people were selling horses for $100 or less. Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t terrible horses but I was placing them in the wrong races, races that my horses had no chance in winning, thinking that I knew more that people that had been playing the sim for a long time. Needless to say, my bank account started dwindling. I now have to wait to unload some of the horses I don’t want because it costs $1000 to send your horses to greener pastures if they are less than 4 and I don’t have enough disposable income to get rid of 50 horses that probably won’t make their purchase fee back.

About the time it dawned on me that I had bought a lot of horses that I shouldn’t have, I got my first influx of money from that Steward. And that is when I made my second mistake. Auctions. Once again, it was easy to bid, I had some extra money and I thought I could buy a hard to tell galloper for a couple of thousand and he would turn into a super horse and make all my money back. That didn’t happen and once again I paid way to much for some marginal horses that began eating up my bank account, again.

Next round of cash, new mistakes. Shipping costs, vet fees and renaming fees. With my bank account healthy again, I didn’t think twice about shipping a horse across the globe for $1000, but once I started understanding race placement, I realized that my horses were in the wrong locations for them to be successful and once again I was entering races that I had no chance in winning and little chance of cashing a check. I was vetting all my horses which added up quickly and I made some mistakes naming horses so I changed names 2 or 3 times which cost me $5000 each time after the initial naming. All this added up quickly and my money stated disappearing again.

My suggestion to new players is to think before you spend. The opportunities to spend money, especially on inexpensive horses, are unlimited but the actual costs are greater than you think. Do your research and asks questions before you actually drop some cash. By taking your time and making informative decisions early in your career, the easier it will be to build a hefty bankroll. If you can do this, when you are able to breed you will have many options or you’ll be able to buy that special horse that you really want in one of the Steward’s auctions.

Think quality not quantity.


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