“We bought a ranch to rehabilitate racehorses.”

During a trip to Australia, finance executive and energy trader Elizabeth Ralph was feeding Cheetos to a kangaroo when she realized it was time to ditch corporate life and pursue a career closer to her heart. She launched The Spiritual Investor to help people achieve financial freedom doing what they love, and found her own calling by buying a ranch where she and her wife rehabilitated retired racehorses. Here’s what the experience taught Ralph about the wisest way to invest your time and money.

How’d you end up with a horse farm? “I retired from trading at 39, but I started investing in real estate back in 2008. It was one of the first ways I learned to create wealth beyond a paycheck. I’ve invested in all kinds of properties, but the horse ranch? That one was different. It was the dream. We bought Give Grass Ranch in Ramona, CA, in 2015 for $505,000. We wanted a property with a horse arena and enough space to retrain racehorses that otherwise would have been sent to slaughter. My wife and I used to rescue horses, and this gave us the chance to do that again.”

What renovations did you do? “We invested around $200,000, which included building a tiny home for $25,000, which we then rented out for $1,400 per month to cover landscaping and help cleaning stalls each month. We would do as much of the work as possible ourselves, and there were a lot of lessons: Learn how to fix fencing. Get comfortable with irrigation systems. Something is always breaking.”

Where did you get the horses? “We’d buy off-the-track thoroughbreds for $1,500–$3,000. After training them to jump, do basic dressage, and ride trails, they could be worth $10,000 or more. The average cost in California to keep a horse while it was in training was about $1,600 a month. So there was a timeline that needed to be met in order for money to go back into the business to help future horses. The first few horses we brought in were… let’s just say a little wild. It definitely cost us more than we expected, between training and vet bills.”

Did this venture even become profitable over time? “Eventually, retraining thoroughbreds and getting them ready for new homes turned into a sustainable side business. The income varied depending on how many horses we had and ranged anywhere from $400 to $3,000 per month. But that wasn’t the point. If one horse took longer or needed rehab, we gave it. One of our horses, Dutch—a cream-colored rockstar pony—had won everything at Del Mar. A 16-year-old girl fought for him in a bidding war. He had been saved from a slaughter truck just miles from the border. That kind of alignment… it’s indescribable.”

You sold the ranch in 2022 for $1 million. Looking back, what did you learn? “I look back on that time as one of the most fulfilling chapters of my life, and I think not making it about money is exactly what allowed the money to come through. We went from happy hours in the city and fancy cars to canning 800 peaches a year and driving a tractor. At night, we would sit in the hot tub under the black sky because there were no streetlights out there. It was heaven. It taught me that when you stop making everything about money, the money still comes, but more importantly, so does the joy.”