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This post is brought to you by Cigarti where you can buy electronic cigarettes.
By Mike Barclay of 10CentsWorth.com.
It’s been a ridiculously long day. Your boss was breathing down your neck all day, the guy who sits next to you wouldn’t keep his mouth shut, and your computer kept freezing. Finally, you get to your car and what’s the first thing you do? You reach into your pocket and grab a cigarette. Instantly, a calming feeling rushes over you.
How do I know this? I used to smoke. Eventually I realized all the negative things about smoking and I quit. It reduces your lifespan, it causes lung cancer and a number of other diseases. It makes you smell and turns your teeth yellow. There’s a million reasons you shouldn’t smoke, yet so many people overlook how much their cigarettes�are costing them. Let’s break this nasty little habit down, shall we?
The average cost of a pack of cigarettes is around 5-6 dollars. So we’ll go with an average of about $5.50 with tax. The average smoker will smoke about a pack of cigarettes a day. That means that you’d be spending:
Weekly: $38.50
Monthly: $154.00
Yearly: $1,848.00
That’s A LOT of cash to be spending on something that is physically unhealthy! And I’m just talking about the direct cost of the pack of cigarettes itself. When you factor in all of the other medical expenses that will inevitably come from all of the junk going into your system, who knows what the total cost at the end of your life would be.
What could I do with an extra $38.50 a week? It could go towards my weekly groceries (especially if you’re trying to keep your grocery spending to around $25 a week), my monthly auto insurance, or credit card bills. You could even use it to splurge on your family once in a while and go out for a nice family dinner.
A lot of people have problems quitting, which wasn’t that difficult for me. You may be able to kick the habit in seven days if you really are motivated. Buy some Vitamin C from your local grocery store, and a couple bottles of pure grapefruit juice (not the cocktail, just straight grapefruit juice.) Use the Vitamin C as much as you want (you can’t overdose on it) so it flushes everything out of your system. Should take about 3 days to totally cleanse yourself of the actual nicotine. Then, it’s no longer about the chemical addiction, but just the habitual.
Carry around some grapefruit juice with you wherever you go. When you have the urge to smoke, take a swig. Knocks the urge right out of you with the shock of the tartness. All of this will cost you maybe an extra $5-15 a week until you’re finally rid of the addiction, which may only take you three weeks. And in the long run, it saves you thousands.
And of course, your life.
UPDATE: Linda has some painful, I mean helpful advice for quitters:
I, too, am an ex-smoker and believe me it was very hard for me. Took 3 trys. One more thing that helps with the habit part � put a thick rubberband on your wrist and snap it every time you want a cigarette. This helps because you will start to associate smoking with pain.
Emmy says knowing where your bottom line is, is powerful:
Ha! If I had been a smoker I think this great insight might have been pretty darn helpful. Seeing how much things cost makes you really take a second look at where you are spending your money and allows you to really ask yourself … Why!
March 30th, 2010 at 11:08 am
I, too, am an ex-smoker and believe me it was very hard for me. Took 3 trys.
One more thing that helps with the habit part — put a thick rubberband on your wrist and snap it every time you want a cigarette. This helps because you will start to associate smoking with pain.
March 30th, 2010 at 2:24 pm
Ha! If I had been a smoker I think this great insight might have been pretty darn helpful. Seeing how much things cost makes your really take a second look at where you are spending your money and allows you to really ask yourself.. Why!
March 30th, 2010 at 3:03 pm
One of the things that really gets me about smokers is they smoke in their car with the cigarette out the window and if you drive behind them, all of that smoke gets in your car through your vent…YUCK! I don’t think smokers realize this.
March 30th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Good for you, BB, for showing people the economic realities of smoking. My grandpa (who died of a stroke) smoked for 50 years since a teen; in retirement, on a fixed income, he tried to quite many times, but couldn’t b/c it had become a part of himself… and it took his life much earlier than it had to. That’s a lot of money that he spent over his lifetime! Thanks for pointing it out. You could save some lives with that insight.
March 31st, 2010 at 7:58 am
I was a smoker for 20 years, it has seriously effected my health, I couldnt run at all, I struggled to walk up the stairs. I decided I had to give up, at the age of 36 I felt like I was an old man and ready for the scrapyard. I tried various ways to give up and really struggled. Then I actually tried self hypnosis and that actually did the trick for me. Yes I out on a few pounds in weight for a couple of months, but I soon stopped the over eating and things went back to normal. Its taken me over a year now but I do feel so much better, I can actually jog up the stairs and my kids are so pleased to see me being active.All this was because I found the easiest way to quit smoking