Quit Smoking to Save Money

While your health is of the utmost importance, there are more than just health reasons to quit smoking. The monetary cost of buying those cigarettes every day or every week really adds up and can have big impact on your budget.

Smoking cigarettes is certainly a very expensive habit. What's worse is that many people (it used to be myself as well) smoke more than one pack per day. Many smokers may start out smoking just a few cigarettes per day. But as time goes by and their addiction goes on, they start increasing the number of cigarettes they smoke every day in order to get their "fix". Therefore, the cost of their habit goes up accordingly until they take steps to finally quit smoking for good.

It's easy to calculate the amount of money that you spend on your smokes by averaging how much you spend per pack and multiply that number by the number of packs you smoke per day. Then take that number and multiply it by 365. That's the annual out of pocket cost for your nicotine habit. Of course that doesn't include health issues related to your smoking, smoky clothes smell or gas to go to buy them, etc.

If where you live, cigarettes cost $3.59 and you smoke a pack a day, you're spending $1,310.35 just for the cigarettes themselves. Wouldn't you rather take that $1,310.35 and do something wild with it. Imagine if you smoke 3 packs a day or if cigarettes cost $5 a pack where you live. We're talking about some serious cash here.     

If you decided to quit smoking your pack a day and invested that money in a 401k plan or a IRA and got an average of 8.5% interest for 30 years, you would be looking at a nest egg of a quarter of a million dollars from this alone!  

If you continue to smoke, you will also be paying  many other expenses associated with your habit. Besides the fact you're a higher risk for cancer there are expenses such as cleaning smelly clothes, teeth cleaning, cleaning your vehicle and repairing holes from the ashes.

You're also paying substantially higher insurance costs as a smoker. Health care workers know the direct impact smoking has on the publics health and out overall economy.

Have you ever tried to sell a vehicle that you smoked in for years. Good luck with that. Everyone can smell a smoky car right away and no one likes it so the value of your vehicle is less. It's also a proven fact that on average, people that smoke tend to earn less and be less productive than non-smokers. Just put yourself in the position an employer. If you had a choice to hire a smoker or a non-smoker and they were otherwise equally qualifies, who would you rather hire?

These are some of the costs costs associated with smoking. When you consider the health impact smoking has, the cost is even greater. You should quit smoking for your health. You should also quit smoking to reduce your financial waste and put that money towards something that goes up in value.