One Less Cigarette a Day Saves $91+ Per Year

I am not a smoker, but a couple of my friends are. Some of them occasionally complain about money problem to me, so I was wondering what their smoking habit is costing them. I am not going to ask any of them to stop, but I hope this post will help them move in the right direction.

My first step was to figure out what a pack of cigarette costs. I went to a grocery store in my neighborhood and the cashier told me it is $6.75 a pack. I was shocked — that is expensive. I am not going to assume that this is what my friends paid, so I will use a more conservative $5 a pack (or 25 cents a cigarette).

If a smoker can reduce his consumption by just 1 cigarette per day, that translates into $91.25 year. Most of my smoking friends smoke about half a pack a day — that’s over $900 a year!

Here are some cool factoids:

• Invest $900 a year at 10% and you have over $160,000 in 30 years
• Life insurance costs more than twice as much for smokers versus non-smoker. I checked BudgetLife.com and compared $500,000 20 years term life policy for a 33 years old — non-smokers pay any where from $260 to $580 versus $1,380 for smokers.
• Smokers pay about $40 more a month for medical insurance.
• Smokers’ home are 35% more likely to catch fire and pay about 10% more for home insurance.
• Smoking in your car can dramatically drop its resale value.
• Smokers hit the bucket about 10 years quicker.

I hope you enjoyed this short Saturday afternoon post. Tomorrow is the weekly roundup, I collected some really good posts from around the web so please do come back.

Updated: Here is a public service link to a video at Smoking Video: