How Much Money Can You Save by Quitting Smoking?
How much money can you save by quitting smoking? You might be surprised: quitting smoking could save you $750,000.
Smokers can save a staggering amount of money by quitting the habit. The average price of a pack of cigarettes in the U.S. is $6.32, although in some parts of the country it’s as high as $8.
How Much Money Can You Save by Quitting Smoking?
But, based on the average price mentioned above, for someone who used to smoke a pack a day to quit, the savings are:
- Week – $44.24
- Month – $189.60
- Year – $2,300.48
Those are numbers that can certainly affect a person’s or family’s budget. If you invested the same amount of money as what used to support a pack-a-day habit, that might be enough to retire on, depending on how early in life you quit.
Consider an example with the following parameters:
- A 30-year-old smoker with a one pack a day habit
- This person quits smoking and invests the $189.60 a month that previously went toward cigarettes
- This person invests this amount every month from their 30th birthday, until retirement at age 67
- The average long term return on stocks is 10% annually, but we’ll use a slightly conservative figure of 8%
Using Dave Ramsey’s retirement calculator, this person would retire with nearly $750,000 saved, simply by quitting smoking.
Smoking is an expensive habit. How much you can save will vary by how much you smoke, the actual cost of cigarettes in your location, and your age.
However, the example here clearly illustrates stopping smoking will add a significant amount of funds to your budget. If you decide to invest the same amount you could be sitting on a huge nest egg by retirement.
Are a smoker? If so, have you ever calculated how much money you spend on cigarettes?
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Brock is a software engineer by day and personal finance blogger at night. He is a fitness junkie and enjoys grilling and smoking meat. Married with two children, Brock strives to improve his skills as a husband and father, and is always on the lookout to stretch his family’s budget as far as he can.
Smoking isn’t very common nowadays. It’s pretty amazing to see how all this has changed in just 30 years. You see in all the movies from the 80s where almost every “cool” guy smokes.
My father used to spend most of his salary on cigarettes, but now I was able to convince him to use an electronic version. Which is actually nicotine-free, he just gets bored and has to do something with his hands. He’s spending many 2% of the money he used to, which is a huge change. I’d like it for him to stop entirely, but he said he just can’t do it.
I never smoked, it would have been a huge budget buster for us.
The money spent on smoking cigarettes can add up to enough to send children away to college, buy a home, or open a business.