Yep, it’s that time again…October 21st marks NINE years since my last cigarette. NINE years! If you haven’t been reading this site for the last five years, I used to be a very heavy smoker, and quitting cold turkey was a very big deal for me. So every year on October 21st (roughly…I’ve missed the day a few times), I take this opportunity to figure out how much money I would have spent on cigarettes had I not quit.
This year the math is a little more complicated, since it’s a lot cheaper to smoke in California than in New York. I used to smoke on average 1.75 packs a day (most days were 1.5, but many were 2+, often reaching 2.5 easily). So over the last nine years that’s 3,287 days (2000 and 2008 were leap years), I would have smoked 5,752 packs of cigarettes, or 115,040 individual smokes. Calculating the first eight years at the New York City rough average of $7 a pack across 5,112 packs I get $35,784, plus another year’s worth at the California average of $4.50 a pack, we wind up with a total amount I would have spent had I been smoking of…
Drumroll please…
$38,664
Smoking in California is definitely cheaper at roughly $3,000 a year (compared to $4,500 in NYC), but that’s still a lot of money.
If you’re thinking of quitting, visit QuitNet for more information. Also try the Smoking Calculator if you’d like to see just how much that habit is stealing from your precious income. And if that’s not enough motivation, read Wikipedia’s article on the health effects of tobacco or the thoroughly unpleasant How does your body digest a cigarette? article at HowStuffWorks.
And remember, you can quit. I’m living, breathing proof of that. If I can do it, anyone can do it.
I’ve been smoking 7 years now (less than a pack a day) and I’ve quit twice. I’m currently trying (and failing) again, but this entry is fairly inspirational. I just cracked last week under the withdrawal symptoms (I just got into a new relationship and the horrid rage/aggravation I get from the withdrawals is really not conducive to makin’ with the sweet sweet romance). But it’s true, when you quit (I recently quit for 6 months) that you get all your senses back and everything feels different. Just those first couple days (and, for me, the first whole month really) is really really tough. It’s too bad there is no “easy way”.