2004/08/25
Money to burn
I just posted this to Worth, but I'm copying it here, too. Maybe someone else might find it interesting.
When I first started smoking, cigarettes cost about a dime apiece. (Canadian dollars, here.)
Now, even rolling our own, they cost us 35 cents each.
That averages 22.5 cents per cigarette over the past two decades.
I've smoked between one and two packs (at 25 cigs/pack) a day for 23 years. That averages to 37.5 smokes/per day.
That's 314812 cigarettes.
At 22.5 cents per cigarette, I've spent almost $71,000 ruining my health. I've set $71,000 on fire.
Crap!
Right now I do smoke about 40/day (well, less since I've started cutting back) so I'll keep that 37.5/day figure from up there and work with it.
Right now I spend $13.13 a day to continue my habit. $400/month.
$4,800/year.
Crap!
We're definitely on the low-income side of the standard-of-living curve. I sure could use that $400/month for other things.
Having proved that all I would do with that money is burn it, anyway, I've shown that I don't need it to get by. I could just not spend what I'd save by not smoking and put it all into savings.
Or I could add $200 to our monthly budget, eat less macaroni, and save the other half.
We're always looking for little part-time jobs to add to our income. Those sorts of jobs only pay minimum wage. We could stop doing that and spend 50 more hours each month relaxing instead of busting our asses to afford something I'm just going to burn, anyway.
---
Oh. Mrs. G is quitting, too, and she smokes as much as I do. Guess I should double all of the figures above, then.
$800/month. $9600/year.
Wow.
We could rent two homes instead of one. We could go on a cruise or backpack through Europe next year. We could replace our sh---y computers and have enough left over to have a weekly date night like we used to in the early years.
That's a lot of money we burn. That's a lot of pressure to earn that money that would be lifted from our shoulders each month. That's our retirement taken care of, *bang*, if we decide to just sock it away instead of smoking it.
I'm looking forward to this quitting thing. The money's only the smallest part of why, but doing the math sure makes quitting look even more worthwhile.
When I first started smoking, cigarettes cost about a dime apiece. (Canadian dollars, here.)
Now, even rolling our own, they cost us 35 cents each.
That averages 22.5 cents per cigarette over the past two decades.
I've smoked between one and two packs (at 25 cigs/pack) a day for 23 years. That averages to 37.5 smokes/per day.
That's 314812 cigarettes.
At 22.5 cents per cigarette, I've spent almost $71,000 ruining my health. I've set $71,000 on fire.
Crap!
Right now I do smoke about 40/day (well, less since I've started cutting back) so I'll keep that 37.5/day figure from up there and work with it.
Right now I spend $13.13 a day to continue my habit. $400/month.
$4,800/year.
Crap!
We're definitely on the low-income side of the standard-of-living curve. I sure could use that $400/month for other things.
Having proved that all I would do with that money is burn it, anyway, I've shown that I don't need it to get by. I could just not spend what I'd save by not smoking and put it all into savings.
Or I could add $200 to our monthly budget, eat less macaroni, and save the other half.
We're always looking for little part-time jobs to add to our income. Those sorts of jobs only pay minimum wage. We could stop doing that and spend 50 more hours each month relaxing instead of busting our asses to afford something I'm just going to burn, anyway.
---
Oh. Mrs. G is quitting, too, and she smokes as much as I do. Guess I should double all of the figures above, then.
$800/month. $9600/year.
Wow.
We could rent two homes instead of one. We could go on a cruise or backpack through Europe next year. We could replace our sh---y computers and have enough left over to have a weekly date night like we used to in the early years.
That's a lot of money we burn. That's a lot of pressure to earn that money that would be lifted from our shoulders each month. That's our retirement taken care of, *bang*, if we decide to just sock it away instead of smoking it.
I'm looking forward to this quitting thing. The money's only the smallest part of why, but doing the math sure makes quitting look even more worthwhile.
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You seriously want to quit? Money is not much good as a reason. Unless you only have $10 to your name, $5 up in smoke is pretty small potatoes. When you quit, you will not suddenly find the bucks stashed under the mattress.
I stopped cold turkey Labor Day 1990 out of sheer terror. Thought I was developing emphysema. Was just a bad ragweed year. Still. Since then, while I still have colds and allergies(not talking miracles here), almost never so bad as before.
Oh, yeah: withdrawal. Didn't have any trouble there. It was hand habits that were the hard thing to kick. All those times you reach for a cig without thinking. I took to carrying plastic drinking straws of the right length. Stuck one in my mouth and chewed for a while. Felt like an ass but kept it up for about a week.
Will say, though, that even now something will trigger and I feel a little hankering.
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I stopped cold turkey Labor Day 1990 out of sheer terror. Thought I was developing emphysema. Was just a bad ragweed year. Still. Since then, while I still have colds and allergies(not talking miracles here), almost never so bad as before.
Oh, yeah: withdrawal. Didn't have any trouble there. It was hand habits that were the hard thing to kick. All those times you reach for a cig without thinking. I took to carrying plastic drinking straws of the right length. Stuck one in my mouth and chewed for a while. Felt like an ass but kept it up for about a week.
Will say, though, that even now something will trigger and I feel a little hankering.
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