What would you get if you had 10,to 12k to spend

[kitedemon]

I have no problem with breeding in a basement a bedroom is different. A business person whom fails to pay 'rent' from a business to a personal residence is placing their home at risk if the business gets sued or suffers similar calamity it is a business asset with no separation between personal and business. The same can be said for not paying a wage to your self and or partner in case of break up of personal relations the partner, if they are an employee and might be able to claim part of the profits but not the business as they are just an employee. Suggesting that you don't need to do both may come back to haunt them later. Every breeder I know pays rent for the facility and rent that is consistent with market pricing in their area. I am not saying gold is better I am just stating that costs of animals and cost of food and power is not the only costs a BUSINESS incurs. The additional costs of running a professional business must be counted it that is all, not keeping business finances and personal finances separate means disaster if one brings down the other. Smart business people can walk away from financial disaster with out massive impact on the other end either business or personal. It would suck to get sued due to a simple mistake and loose all the business snakes but it would be worse to loose your house and personal assets in the process.

[WingedWolfPsion]

Ok, I have about 100 animals, and they're in the basement.
The reason we don't calculate rent into this is that unless you have dedicated the space to your business, you aren't allowed to write off the rent (as a percentage of your house) as a business expense. The government doesn't consider it to be a business expense if it is shared space, so why should you?

I'll go ahead and calculate that in anyhow. Let's say, $200 out of your rent/mortgage is devoted to your business space. Now electricity--that's fairly overblown, we probably spend less than $100 per month running the racks. The whole house would be heated regardless, so the animals don't take up extra gas heat, and the amount of water they take is also negligible, but I'll go ahead and add that in at $20.
Bedding costs just $80 per month for 100 animals, and there's no such thing as 'sundries' for a ball python collection.

I'll add in a few annual expenses to top it off, perhaps $100 in soap, bleach, sponges, provent-a-mite, whatever. Soap and bleach are cheap.

My snakes eat approximately $100 worth of food per week, so that's $400 per month.

I have around $6500 in equipment for heating, thermostats, incubators, racks, and tubs, water bowls, etc. While these are rough estimates rather than exact figures, they're fairly close.

That totals to $16,200
Estimated income for next year, 25,681.
Profit would be $9481.
Of course, that includes the cost of the equipment, which is rather silly, since that was paid off years ago.
So, remove that again.
Profit becomes $15,981.
Now, to put this into perspective, ONLY 18 females are actually breeding. The rest of the animals are males or holdbacks ranging from 2 year-olds to hatchlings! (I know people are twitchy about discussing numbers when it comes to their personal income or businesses, though I've honestly never fully understood why, which is why I'm willing to do so now).

With a collection of 100 animals, and only 18 females producing eggs, the PROFIT is over $15,000. And yes, I did factor in the holdbacks.
Now, imagine what it will be once the animals that are currently too young have reached maturity. Expenses will not increase significantly, and minimal equipment purchases will be needed (perhaps $2000 for hatchling racks, incubators, etc). Additionally, more high-valued animals will be produced than I have currently.
The profit goes up to $30,000, and then to $50,000, in just a couple of years, even factoring in depreciation.
Gold doesn't do that, sorry.
Gold is a good security, but it's not a great growth investment. Ball pythons, if you're willing to put in the work and you enjoy it, are an amazing investment. It's not low risk, but the potential is astounding, and that's why some of us are doing this.
Once you get up to 50K profit per year, if you continue the same plan, you can expect to increase profits by as much as 20K per year, because you will continue to have held back females coming into maturity. If you buy new high-end males when you can, it goes even faster.

Roughly, if you begin all of this with an investment of 20 ADULT females and some nice male morphs including a couple of double or triple gene males, then within 6 years, you can be making as much as 100K in profits. If you reinvest at least half of your profits, and do so wisely, it's virtually a certainty, provided you don't have anything disastrous happen to your collection (health issues, equipment failures, etc). If you've taken proper biosecurity precautions and have a fire system and security system, that shouldn't happen.

Can gold turn 20K into 100K in 6 years? Understand that once you reach that level, additional investments you make can be doubled in one year.

There are a lot of folks out there who lose their shirts trying to breed reptiles, but it's not because they're a bad investments. Most of the time, it's because they did it wrong. (Occasionally, disasters do happen, but they're rare).

Even if you have horrible luck, and only half your females breed, you still wind up making 100K in profit after 10 years. And it doesn't take nearly as long to get up to 500K as it took you to get to 100K. Yes, there are some breeders who are millionaires, they just don't talk about that. (Can you blame them?)
By the time you're ready to retire, you're going to be very comfortable.

Make no mistake about it, it's hard work, and you MUST have business management, marketing, and all sorts of other knowledge--it is a business. But it's a lot better than gold, if you do it right.

[tcutting]

Ok, I have about 100 animals, and they're in the basement.
The reason we don't calculate rent into this is that unless you have dedicated the space to your business, you aren't allowed to write off the rent (as a percentage of your house) as a business expense. The government doesn't consider it to be a business expense if it is shared space, so why should you?

I'll go ahead and calculate that in anyhow. Let's say, $200 out of your rent/mortgage is devoted to your business space. Now electricity--that's fairly overblown, we probably spend less than $100 per month running the racks. The whole house would be heated regardless, so the animals don't take up extra gas heat, and the amount of water they take is also negligible, but I'll go ahead and add that in at $20.
Bedding costs just $80 per month for 100 animals, and there's no such thing as 'sundries' for a ball python collection.

I'll add in a few annual expenses to top it off, perhaps $100 in soap, bleach, sponges, provent-a-mite, whatever. Soap and bleach are cheap.

My snakes eat approximately $100 worth of food per week, so that's $400 per month.

I have around $6500 in equipment for heating, thermostats, incubators, racks, and tubs, water bowls, etc. While these are rough estimates rather than exact figures, they're fairly close.

That totals to $16,200
Estimated income for next year, 25,681.
Profit would be $9481.
Of course, that includes the cost of the equipment, which is rather silly, since that was paid off years ago.
So, remove that again.
Profit becomes $15,981.
Now, to put this into perspective, ONLY 18 females are actually breeding. The rest of the animals are males or holdbacks ranging from 2 year-olds to hatchlings! (I know people are twitchy about discussing numbers when it comes to their personal income or businesses, though I've honestly never fully understood why, which is why I'm willing to do so now).

With a collection of 100 animals, and only 18 females producing eggs, the PROFIT is over $15,000. And yes, I did factor in the holdbacks.
Now, imagine what it will be once the animals that are currently too young have reached maturity. Expenses will not increase significantly, and minimal equipment purchases will be needed (perhaps $2000 for hatchling racks, incubators, etc). Additionally, more high-valued animals will be produced than I have currently.
The profit goes up to $30,000, and then to $50,000, in just a couple of years, even factoring in depreciation.
Gold doesn't do that, sorry.
Gold is a good security, but it's not a great growth investment. Ball pythons, if you're willing to put in the work and you enjoy it, are an amazing investment. It's not low risk, but the potential is astounding, and that's why some of us are doing this.
Once you get up to 50K profit per year, if you continue the same plan, you can expect to increase profits by as much as 20K per year, because you will continue to have held back females coming into maturity. If you buy new high-end males when you can, it goes even faster.

Roughly, if you begin all of this with an investment of 20 ADULT females and some nice male morphs including a couple of double or triple gene males, then within 6 years, you can be making as much as 100K in profits. If you reinvest at least half of your profits, and do so wisely, it's virtually a certainty, provided you don't have anything disastrous happen to your collection (health issues, equipment failures, etc). If you've taken proper biosecurity precautions and have a fire system and security system, that shouldn't happen.

Can gold turn 20K into 100K in 6 years? Understand that once you reach that level, additional investments you make can be doubled in one year.

There are a lot of folks out there who lose their shirts trying to breed reptiles, but it's not because they're a bad investments. Most of the time, it's because they did it wrong. (Occasionally, disasters do happen, but they're rare).

Even if you have horrible luck, and only half your females breed, you still wind up making 100K in profit after 10 years. And it doesn't take nearly as long to get up to 500K as it took you to get to 100K. Yes, there are some breeders who are millionaires, they just don't talk about that. (Can you blame them?)
By the time you're ready to retire, you're going to be very comfortable.

Make no mistake about it, it's hard work, and you MUST have business management, marketing, and all sorts of other knowledge--it is a business. But it's a lot better than gold, if you do it right.

I like turtles.


But seriously the toughest thing to account for is depreciation and where the market is on the morphs you are producing. I agree if you can invest in BPs you can turn more money from them vrs gold. I can see why people would choose gold instead of BPs. No work to take care of and it puts you in a very secure position with your investment.

[WingedWolfPsion]

Sure, gold is a good security. It's fairly reliable in the long term. It just isn't very likely to make you wealthy.

For the person mentioning separating business and personal finances, with a sole proprietorship--at some point, that does become necessary, but in the beginning, it may not be very practical.
As for being sued...for what? It's simple--NEVER allow customers onto your property or into your home. Assuming you have no employees (and if you're still housing the animals in your home, why would you need them?) you don't actually require liability insurance. There is simply no possibility that anyone is going to encounter your animals on your property--you have control over that.

The moment you become large enough to hire an employee, or house your animals in a separate facility, OR if you want to to allow people in to see the animals, then you need to be fully insured, and you probably want to switch to a limited liability corporation for your business model. Up until then, your fortunes and those of your business are too deeply intertwined for the added expenses and difficulties to be worth it.
(I'm sure there will be disagreements on this issue, but I have certainly been told by folks in the know that I should remain a sole proprietorship for as long as is practical).

For most other things, prevention is better than insurance (although both is best of all). Worried about fire? (A very legitimate concern given recent events)...install a fire suppression system, don't just sit and worry about it. Fire insurance is wise, preventing a damaging fire is SO much better. Worried about theft? Cameras, motion detectors, alarms, have them all. It's really not that expensive to put in a GOOD security system. Use electronic locks, not key locks. (Any fool with a pocket full of bump-keys can get in if you use key locks). Use a 'cottage sitter' or similar system to monitor the temperatures and call your cell phone or text you if the temperatures go beyond a certain range. All of the above will cost you less than 1K if you shop around, so it's ridiculous not to have it, even if you have a fairly small collection.

There are ways to reduce your risks.

[fishboyUK]

If I had 12k £ (not $) I'd save another 8k or so and open a shop. Probably down on the south coast somewhere.


Gold will be worthless once the apocalypse hits. Invest in guns, ammunition, canned goods and clean bottled water......

[WingedWolfPsion]

Having seen up close what pet shop owners deal with...not me, lol.

[fishboyUK]

Having seen up close what pet shop owners deal with...not me, lol.

Who said anything about pet shops?

[WingedWolfPsion]

Well, we were talking snakes, and you did not specify....just assumed, lol.
Bad economy to start a new business, though.

[fishboyUK]

Well, we were talking snakes, and you did not specify....just assumed, lol.
Bad economy to start a new business, though.

You have a point

Well you were correct in your assumption anyway, I WAS talking pet shops. I've worked in a pet shop (aquarium) running the marine section for a couple of years so i know you get all types. It's a dream of mine to have my own business and it would be a bonus if it was doing something I love. I'd like to maybe combine reps and aquatics. It wouldn't be for a few years anyhow so the economy would probably be on the up by then.

[Bigfish1975]

1.0 het puma male to take care of my 0.2 ivories and 0.5 pastel yellowbellies that I have.
and 1.4 double het albino pieds.