Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Wednesday, January 14th.

Today on Forbes, the cost of living like a billionaire hit a new high in 2025.

By the time the final gavel fell at last fall's Keenland yearling September sale,

wealthy buyers had smashed through records at the world's largest

thoroughbred auction, spending $532 million on racehorses, driving up the average price of a

yearling to nearly $650,000, the most ever, and 23% more than 2024.

A major reason for such largesse, among the tax breaks in President Trump's

sweeping one big beautiful bill act, was a provision cementing the ability to write off 100%

of a racehorse purchase in the first year of ownership. Eric Mitchell, the bloodstock editor

at Equestrian publication Blood Horse, says,

quote,

The bill has been a big thing for a lot of people, to know that they can turn around and write off a substantial amount of what they're spending,

depending upon what the rest of their tax situation looks like.

Over and over again, we heard that from people who were buying at the auction.

Mitchell says this kind of growth in Kentucky, the country's hub of thoroughbred breeding,

is comparable to the mid-1980s, when the federal tax rate was high, but tax shelters

and write-offs for losses were abundant.

Resources aren't the only aspect of the billionaire lifestyle that are getting more expensive.

Since 1982, Forbes has been tracking the ultra-legurious goods and high-end services

frequented by the richest of the rich, ranging from Gucci loafers to sailing yachts,

to create our Cost of Living Extremely Well Index, or CLEWI, essentially a consumer price index

for billionaires. This year, CLEWI increased by 5.5%, up from last year's 4.7% and

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