The Cost Of Smoking

Over the Years Smoking Gets Expensive

      If you can't bring yourself to quit smoking purely for health reasons, take a look at the cost of smoking.  With the cost of a pack of cigarettes constantly on the rise the cost of smoking over time can get extremely expensive.

      In a simple example, consider that an average smoker may smoke 1 pack of cigarettes per day.  The cost of a pack of cigarettes is between $3.00 and $6.00 depending on where you live.  For this example we'll use a cost of $5.25 per pack.  At only 5 bucks a day that doesn't seem all that expensive at all does it?  How about $36.75 per week?  Still not all that expensive.  Does $157.50 per month start to sound expensive?  That's a lease payment for some peoples cars.  If that's still manageable to you, how about $1,916.25 per year.  If you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day you're probably paying nearly 2 thousand dollars a year to smoke.

      Now lets look at how long you smoke for.  If you start smoking when you're 18 and smoke until the ripe old age of 60 (if you're lucky enough to live that long), you would spend $80,482.50 on cigarettes.  That's assuming that the cost of cigarettes will never go up.  The price of cigarettes will go up so this figure is certainly very low.

      Now lets take a look at some other options that we could spend our $1,916.25 a year on between the ages of 18 and 60.  If you were to put that same $1916.25 in a Roth IRA from the age of 18 to 60 (Chart assumes 9% annual return) you would end up with over $800,000.00 by the time you're ready to retire.

      As you can see, since you already have your $5.25 in your budget for smoking, if you were to put that money to work for you in a Roth IRA you would have over $800,000 by the time your ready to retire.  If you were to wait to draw that money out until you were 62 years old you could actually "not smoke" your way to becoming a millionaire.

      If I have to chose whether I want to have $842,854.26 or and endless string of smoking related health problems when I'm ready to retire, I choose the money every time.  I hope you do to.