Yep, it’s that time again…October 21st marks TEN years since my last cigarette. That’s TEN YEARS! HOLY CRAP. 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, I take this opportunity to figure out how much money I would have spent on cigarettes had I not quit.

But first…

This year I’m going to cheat and calculate a full second year in California, even though I moved to Maryland in July. It’s just easier that way. Anyway, 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 ten years that’s 3,652 days (2000 and 2008 were leap years), I would have smoked 6,391 packs of cigarettes, or 127,820 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 two years 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…

$41,544

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 (and don’t even get me started on how insane it is that a state as broke as California hasn’t proposed heftier sin taxes on smoking).

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.