Cost of Smoking

I'm sure you know cigarette smoking is an expensive habit. But I bet you never thought about how much smoking is really costing you. Read this article to find out to find out the real cost of smoking. I bet you'll be a little surprised!

Let’s start at how much your actual cigarettes are costing you.

Suppose you’re a one pack a day smoker. Well, at nearly $5.00 a pack, at 365 days a year, that’s a whopping $1,825 a year. Invest that at today’s low rates and you’ll have $250,000 by the time you’re 75. (Assuming you’re in your 30s now.)

That’s a lot of money, but it doesn’t stop there.

How about your job? Do you like it? Do you need it?

More and more, employers are paying premiums for smokers’ insurance. Even with government jobs and large corporate jobs, employers actually see charging smokers more money for their insurance as a great way to lower the rising costs of health insurance.

You see insurance companies have two tiers of coverage, one for smokers and another for non-smokers. Obviously, it costs more to cover a smoker than a non-smoker. So, they pass the higher cost of covering smokers to the employer. The way insurance works with most companies, your employer is picking up about half the tab for your insurance. So, who do you think they want as an employee…a smoker or a non-smoker?

Of course, none of this matters if you don’t have a job.

“But I do have a job,” you argue!

For now at least. For more potentially disturbing news, read on.

It is becoming more and more common for people to lose their jobs due, in part, to the fact they are smokers.

Although it seems unfair, it actually makes a lot of sense from the employer’s point of view. Over the course of a year, non-smoking employees are absent much less than their smoking counterparts. Multiply the extra number of sick days by the number of employees of even a medium sized company, and you’re looking at a savings of tens of thousands of dollars.

Combine that cost with the cost of extra insurance for their smoking employees, and you can see there is a lot of pressure on employers to have fewer smoking employees.

So, if the company needs to downsize some employees, it’s unfortunately just natural that they would want to get rid of smokers.

Okay, let’s suppose you don’t need that job, anyway.

Unfortunately, I’ve got news for you…getting a new job has gotten a lot harder lately--if you’re a smoker. For the same reasons as above, companies are trying hard not to employ smokers.

Unfair, you might say. Illegal!

Sure, but then try to prove you didn’t get a job merely because you were a smoker. (I hope you have a lot of money for those legal fees.)

Don’t kill the messenger, but it doesn’t stop there.

A friend of mine recently got a whale of a deal on a slightly used car. He got it for approximately half of the blue book value. I saw the car. It looked great! Had only about thirty or so thousand miles on it. So what was the catch?

It was owned by a smoker…and smelled like it!

Ditto houses.

Years ago, I sold residential real estate. I always hated it when I listed a smoker’s house. Smokers' houses sold for at least ten grand less than the market price. The owners, however, never understood why.

So, you see, smoking costs you a ton of money! Thousands over the course of your life just for cigarettes. And tens of thousands more in money you lose in other ways.

What would you rather do? Smoke a pack of cigarettes a day or make a month’s payment on a really nice house? How about a great vacation in the Caribbean?

I think you get the picture.

So, use this site to find some way you can quit smoking for good. Not only will you get your health back, you’ll have a lot more fun with your money!

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