Financial Impacts of Smoking Cigarettes
If you’ve already read about all the negative consequences smoking can have on your health, but you are still not motivated enough to try quit cigarettes cold turkey, perhaps you want to consider the following: Smoking takes a great toll not only on your health but financially as well. Smoking cigarettes has a great financial consequence in the long run. It has been proven that smokers tend to pay more for insurance, dry cleaning and teeth cleaning too. Also, they earn less and receive less in pension and Social Security benefits. Not to mention that any resale they do on a car or a home usually comes with a drop on the resale value due to the stench of the cigarette smoke. Most smokers enjoy lighting up while on the move. And without consistent and thorough cleaning, the side effects of smoking in the car will start to show very quickly. Not only will it reek of cigarette smoke, the cigarette butts can cause burn holes to the interior.
Smoking can also cause you to lose your job. According to a survey done by the Society for Human Resource Management, 5% of employers prefer to hire non smokers and even 1% do not hire smokers period. Several renowned companies have stopped hiring smokers for full time positions and sometimes perform nicotine tests on employees and applicants. This tendency has been increasing drastically in the last years and it doesn’t come as a surprise, seeing as smokers cost the economy a whooping figure of $97.6 billion a year in lost productivity. (Based on the number of working years lost due to smoking related premature deaths) Each American household spends $630 a year in taxes due to smoking.
On a more personal level, the numbers aren’t less impressive. With a pack of cigarettes pricing around $4.50 to $5, a person that smokes a pack of cigarettes a day, burns through $31 dollars per week, which adds up to $1,638 a year. Add up another $50 a year for a weekly pack of gum or mints. Plus a minimum of $200 for a teeth whitening per year and $144 more for extra dry cleaning on just one suit per month. The figures speak for themselves. And this is without considering other products typically used by smokers like smoker’s toothpaste, cough sweets, breath freshener, hand-care cream for stained fingers and lip balm. All of this spent to support a habit that is killing you at the same time. Other than the cost of the actual pack of cigarettes, a smoker will pay almost a third of the same cost on smoking related expenses.
Having in mind the figures to which these numbers add up, all the money being spent yearly on smoking and its related costs could easily be used to make a hefty house payment or spent on a joyful vacation with the family by a non smoker. Putting all this money in any sort of savings plan could help you through retirement or pay for your children’s higher education. Reconsider the great dent smoking puts in your personal finances and Just Quit Cigs.