Doing the Math of What Smoking Costs
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by: cscarpero
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Most smokers are aware of the fact that smoking cigarettes is hazardous to their health. They understand that smoking can cause a host of medical conditions that could potentially be fatal.
Smokers are also aware that many public places will not allow them to smoke inside or on their premises. One thing smokers may not be aware of is how much money they are actually spending on their habit.
The price of cigarettes has gone up over the past several years because tobacco companies are forever be taxed more due to law suits. These lawsuits stem from claims that the tobacco companies are at fault for certain individuals health conditions.
Because of the increase in taxes, the cost of cigarettes has gone up. Smokers keep buying the cigarettes as the price has gone up, and most hardcore smokers will continue to smoke even if the price of a pack goes up to $20 a pack.
For some people the addiction is so bad that they will smoke at any cost.
To figure out how much money you are spending on your smoking habit, let's do some math. Let's say you smoke 2 packs of cigarettes per day at the current average price of $4 per pack. That equals 14 packs per week and the total cost spent is $56. Multiply what you smoke per week by 4 and you are spending $224 a month and $2,688 a year. If you have been a long time smoker or intend to stay a long time smoker, that means you will or would have spent almost $30,000 over 10 years time. Those figures are astounding.
The fact that you burned through that money might be unsettling to you.
If you were to quit smoking you could potentially save tens of thousands of dollars just over a 10 year time frame. Imagine what you could have done with that money. If you had invested that money in a company matched 401k plan, you could retire with quite a lot of money. Or, you could have used that money to put a considerable down payment on a house, bought a car with cash, paid for your child's college tuition, or any number of things that would be better than smoking.
We are past the money part for right now; let's take a quick look at some other numbers. Keeping with the idea that you smoke 2 packs of cigarettes per day that means you are smoking 40 cigarettes within a 24 hour period. In a week you will have smoked 280 cigarettes. A month of smoking amounts to roughly 1100 cigarettes, a year is about 13,500, and for ten years your estimated cigarette consumption is about 160,000.
That, my friend, is a whole lot of cigarettes. No wonder the tobacco companies are making so much money.
The math is there, 10 years of smoking can amount to tens of thousands of dollars spent by you and hundreds of thousands of cigarettes smoked by you.
If you quit, your totals go down to zero. Your health increases and your budget increases. It is a win-win situation for you. Not so much for the tobacco companies.
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