Quit and reap the rewards

There are plenty of upsides to giving up smoking and one of them is the money you’ll save. The question is, how will you spend it?

Matt McGovern (Middle Bronco hat arm in air) with 2 year old Nate McGovern from Augustine Heights practice a cheer for a Broncos try. The Brisbane Broncos hold their annual Members’ Day at Suncorp Stadium. Saturday February 9, 2019. (AAP image, John Gass)

There are plenty of upsides to giving up smoking and one of them is the money you’ll save. The question is, how will you spend it?

HAVING to cough up hundreds of dollars every week for cigarettes can place an incredible strain on a family’s already lean budget. Relationships are also put to the test when money is tight and smokes are bought with funds needed for essential items.

If you’ve been thinking of kicking the habit, knowing exactly how much cash you are spending on smoking might be just the incentive for you to quit. QUIT HQ, a website that helps empower people to kick their habit, has a handy calculator that reveals the true cost of smoking. Prepare to be blown away.

The online calculator reveals that those with a 20-a-day habit spend $175 a week or $9125 a year on cigarettes. If you smoke 50 cigarettes a day, you’ll fork out more than $22,000 each year – that’s right, $22,000. Keep doing this for 10 more years and a staggering $220,000 will have gone up in smoke.

If there are two adults in the house who both smoke a packet of 20 a day, that’s $350 a week. Do you call yourself a light smoker? You’re still looking at blowing some serious dollars – even those who smoke 10 cigarettes a day are spending $88 a week or $4589 a year.

It’s time for a lottery moment – what could you do with that money if you quit smoking for good?

Rugby league fans who quit a 10 smokes a day habit could afford the $2450 it costs to buy their family a season pass with premium seating to all Broncos home games. There would also be plenty left over to follow your favourite team and watch them play away games.

Got a love of speed? You could buy a project motorbike or car to tinker with or attend the V8 Supercar Championship events in Australia and New Zealand. By giving up a packet of 50 a day, after a year you could buy that boat or jet ski you’ve always wanted.

Family holidays could become annual events. Stop spending $175 a week to smoke 20 cigarettes a day and you’ll be spending a week on the Gold Coast complete with family theme park passes. If two people in your family smoke, consider the thousands of dollars you’ll save by stopping smoking – suddenly two weeks in Bali or Fiji is looking very do-able.

So much for the fantasy, what about the practicalities? Well, just think about the thousands of dollars you have to find each year to pay water and power bills, council rates and insurances. Ditch the smokes and those bills become a whole lot less stressful.

As any former smoker will tell you, you’ll never regret a decision to release yourself from the financial and physical burden of smoking and neither will your family and friends. Importantly, it’s never too late to stop and doing so will greatly reduce your risk of disease and death.

According to Quit HQ, the life expectancy of a smoker who stops by the age of 30 will be similar to someone that has never smoked; even giving up at 50 years of age decreases your risk of dying in the next 15 years by half.

Need more convincing? Quit HQ provides a wealth of information that will help support your decision to quit smoking. From figuring out how much your habit is costing you, to a smoking photo booth that shows you how you could look in the future if you keep smoking, it’s a one-stop-shop of inspiration and practical help with information on quitting methods such as nicotine replacement products, counselling and prescription medications to help with cravings.

Don’t let your fear of failure hold you back from starting your quit smoking journey, just make a start by visiting Quit HQ today.

Originally published as Quit and reap the rewards