When it comes to expensive vices worth giving up, smoking should be one of the first. Smoking frequently is bad for your health, but it may also break the bank.
Unbeknownst to us, smoking costs us much more than the cost of a pack of cigarettes. Smokers can always find the money to purchase that pack of cigarettes even though they don’t always have enough money to pay their rent on time.
The price of smoking cigarettes and other associated costs
In addition to the price of an e-cigarette, which may cost as much as $15 for prefilled cartridges, and the price of a pack of cigarettes, which can vary from $5 to $14 depending on the state, there are other unanticipated costs related to smoking.
For instance, in their professions, smokers often earn less money than non-smokers. Smokers typically make roughly 80% of what non-smokers do in terms of pay.
Even after adjusting for other factors like age, education, and gender, smoking before the age of 24 will result in lower wages than if you had decided not to start smoking. The decision to start smoking or the act of smoking itself is all that is necessary to start receiving the wage penalty.
Smokers’ low earnings may be a result of their abilities—or lack thereof—at work. Smoking behaviour may be associated with other decisions that affect pay, such pursuing a higher education. It’s interesting to observe that smoking has the same penalty no matter how much you consume. The wage penalty for one cigarette smoker is the same as for daily pack smokers. Smoking is the one behaviour that ensures a lower salary.
Providing yet another viewpoint on smokers’ financial situation
Smokers may overlook the additional cost of higher insurance premiums. For those who must buy health, life, long-term care, or disability insurance on the open market, smoking increases monthly premiums.
When it comes to fully insured packages, smoking won’t stop you from getting coverage, but it will surely raise the cost. Smoking can increase the average cost of term life insurance by more than twofold and disability insurance by 25%.
That makes logic, too: Smokers are more likely to need to use their insurance since they are more likely to get certain illnesses, become disabled, and pass away too soon.
Of course, smokers who encounter a tobacco-related illness, such as heart disease or several malignancies, which may require years of expensive medical care or compel them to leave their previous line of work, bear the brunt of the financial burden associated with tobacco use. The cost curve begins to steepen at that point. Depending on the length and severity of the illness, expenditures can easily approach the tens of thousands at this point.
Statistics on smokers’ medical expenses
The annual economic costs of smoking in the United States from 2009 to 2012 ranged from $289 to $333 billion. This includes $133 billion to $176 billion in direct medical care costs.
Experts agree that employing support networks and effective therapies to stop smoking is the easiest way to avoid the extra costs associated with it. You’ll cut back on other associated costs and quit buying smokes as well as burning furniture.
Additionally, ex-smokers earn substantially more money than never-smokers on average, probably because it takes courage to quit smoking, a quality that employers value.
You might pay less for insurance after giving up. Before you can switch your insurance to a nonsmoker premium, it may take two years or longer after you stop smoking, but if you do, you’ll save money. If the price bothers you, use it as motivation to stop.
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