The cost of smoking...

When I was a heavy smoker with a young family, the price of cigarettes put a big strain on our finances.

But smokers would rather go without food than go without smokes. In a rather pathetic attempt to justify my smoking, I once worked out how much it cost per drag and it seemed like quite good value at the time. But of course I was only really conning myself.

The first cigarette you ever smoked cost you everything you have ever spent on smoking. Because if you hadn't smoked that first cigarette, you wouldn't have smoked the second, and the third...you wouldn't have bought your first pack, then your first carton....

That was one very expensive cigarette!

So how much does smoking really cost? Let's say that you are a pack-a-day smoker living somewhere in or around New York, where the average cost of a pack is $10.

Ten dollars a day comes to $70 per week, $300 per month or $3,650 a year, after tax. To net $3,650, you need to earn around $5,000 a year.

So, let's say that you start smoking comparitively late in life at 20, and that smoking kills you at 70. That's 50 years of smoking at $5,000 per year: a total of $250,000. To put this in context as of 2009, the average price of a house in the US is $257,000.

We are not suggesting that smokers quit because of the money, but what we are saying is that being a smoker is a massive financial commitment.

And of course, so far we have only talked about the financial cost of cigarettes. What about the higher health insurance rates smokers are charged? Or the reduced value of a car or home that has been used by smokers? Or the opportunity cost of investing $250,000 instead of it going up in smoke? One MSNBC report calculated that if a 40 year-old smoker quits and invests that money into their 401(k), it could be worth $400,000 by the time they retire.

And so far, we have only looked at the financial cost of smoking. What about the cost to your health, your self-respect and your freedom. And what about the people who love you? What cost are they paying for you to smoke?

The cost of smoking is more than the price of smokes.

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