Save Your Cigarette Money
Bank on your health
On the face of it, it's an easy calculation - you spend so many dollars a day on cigarettes, there are 365 days in a year, a few clicks on the calculator and you can work out how much smoking will cost you in your lifetime. But money doesn't stay the same over time; the price of cigarettes goes up, and so does the cost of living. And your life expectancy doesn't decrease a year for every year you live - the longer you live, the older the age you'll probably live to. So what seems a simple calculation becomes a little trickier - and the numbers can be more than you'd expect.
But how about if, instead of smoking, you saved?
Let's say that every time you'd buy a pack of cigarettes, you put the money aside instead and invested it. No need to sink it into high-risk stocks (if you want a sick feeling as you watch your money disappear, just keep smoking). Even with the returns on a conservative investment such as government bonds, a few decades of saving a few dollars a day will make a nice nest egg. How nice? Type in the numbers and see...
