{"id":45345,"date":"2023-11-07T04:15:20","date_gmt":"2023-11-07T12:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lenpenzo.com\/blog\/?p=45345"},"modified":"2025-01-17T09:29:05","modified_gmt":"2025-01-17T17:29:05","slug":"5-ways-smoking-negatively-affects-your-personal-finances-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lenpenzo.com\/blog\/id45345-5-ways-smoking-negatively-affects-your-personal-finances-3.html","title":{"rendered":"5 Ways Smoking Negatively Affects Your Finances"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"how<\/a>It’s not likely you’ll be able to find anyone in the United States who has escaped the message that smoking is hazardous to your health. After all, there’s a Surgeon General’s warning on every pack. And children learn about the negative effects of tobacco use in school. Unfortunately, we pay far less attention to how smoking affects our financial health<\/a>. So let’s rectify that now by explaining how smoking affects your finances:<\/p>\n

Cigarettes Aren’t Cheap<\/strong><\/p>\n

Buying cigarettes is a very pricey habit. Cigarettes prices<\/a> vary around the country, from almost $12 in New York to just over $6 in Missouri. Plus, of course, the number of cigarettes one smokes varies. But let’s say you’re a pack-a-day smoker who spends $6 per pack. That adds up to almost $2200 per year.<\/p>\n

If you spend in the mid-range of New York and Missouri prices — currently about $9 per pack — you would spend much more than that: $3285. Over the course of 10 years, you’d have saved anywhere from $22,000 to $32,850 by not smoking. That can help with a down payment on a house, or part of your child’s college tuition<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It gets even steeper if you add up a lifetime’s worth of expenditures. Let’s say you began smoking at 20 and ended at 60 probably from a cigarette-related death, because smoking also reduces your life expectancy. That’s 40 years of smoking. At $9 per pack, that’s more than $131,000.<\/p>\n

Smokers Have Higher Healthcare Expenses<\/strong><\/p>\n

But the direct cost of cigarettes is only part of the fiscal drain of cigarettes. Your doctors and hospitals may be treating you for cancer, heart disease, emphysema and more from a fairly young age.<\/p>\n

When you’re sick and undergoing treatment, you can’t work as much, or you may not be able to work at all. So there are costs associated with lost productivity.<\/p>\n

Together, smoking-related US healthcare costs add up to $225 billion<\/a> every year.<\/p>\n

Smoking can result in higher healthcare costs in several different ways. For example:<\/p>\n