Sunday, July 13, 2008

The dollars spent smoking

I ran across an interesting calculator today. This calculator (http://www.healthstatus.com/cgi-bin/calc/calculator.cgi) lets you figure out how much you spend annually on cigarettes. You put in how many cigarettes you smoke each day, how many are in a pack, and how much they cost. At a 2-pack per day habit, with $6.79 per pack cigarettes, the net cost is just under $5000 per year. If you figure the cost goes up to $6.85 per pack, just a 6 cents per pack increase, you hit that magical $5000 per year cost. Of course, that is just for the cigarettes and not the $4 or higher gas spent picking them up!

I know that you know that smoking is bad for you, but it’s pretty staggering to look at this from a purely financial perspective. Calculating how much money one person can spend on smoking when the price is so high is an interesting financial study.

Maybe that is the scare tactic we ought to use with kids today: food or cigarettes - your choice!

No comments: