The Relation between Quitting Smoking and Actually Not Being Able to Afford It - Cigarettes Are Expensive!

Quitting smoking is obviously something a lot of people are interested in. We can see hundreds of hubs written on the subject, and find even more question asked on the topic of how one can quit smoking easily, permanently, cost-effectively and so on. I am not, nor have I ever been, someone who thinks he knows everything. In fact, I am almost always open to the ideas of others, as well as willing to understand others even if they have opinions and beliefs that oppose mine. However, I am getting more and more tired of people who are trying to quit smoking without really wanting to do it.

I successfully quit smoking some time ago, and I did it cold turkey. This means I didn’t resort to any “helpers”, such as nicotine patches, gums, electronic cigarettes, or whatever else people seem to se using. All I did was decide I wanted to quit, and smoked my last cigarette without even thinking about buying the next pack. However, there is one thing that I recently concluded – and this is the fact that I actually wasn’t able to afford all those packs of cigarettes I had bought in the months prior to finally quitting smoking.

I don’t know about you, but I have the following attitude towards the whole “cost of smoking” thing: even if it cost us just a couple of cents a pack, there is no real need to waste money on something that will ruin your health. The reality is, however, that cigarettes cost much more than a few cents a pack. When I quit smoking, a pack of cigarettes, the brand I used to buy, cost about $2 or $2.5. I often got through even a couple of packs a day, but not each and every day, so it is probably fair to say that I used to spend about $3.5 on cigarettes on a daily basis, which means around $100 a month. Double that for the time when both my girlfriend and I used to smoke. So, this is about $200 a month spent on cigarettes.

Here we come to the actual numbers. You probably think that $200 a month is not a lot of money, and I would probably agree with you if I could earn, let’s say, $400 or $500 a month. Double that for two of us, and we would earn around $1000 a month – and this would be enough for us to live comfortably here in our part of the world. However, this is near to impossible to do. Namely, here where we live, it is difficult enough to find any job, let alone a job that will pay $500 a month. I used to attend college and work the graveyard shift six or seven days a week, and I would make no more than $250 a month – which was our rent at the time. So, you are probably looking at that $200 a month from a different perspective, right?

Yes, we technically have that $200 a month we would otherwise spend on cigarettes. But, do we really have that money? No, we do not. Here is the point I am trying to make – we didn’t have the money even when we used to spend it on cigarettes. We used to spend this money on cigarettes, and we needed a lot of other stuff at the time, such as better food, clothes, and similar things. So, when we are talking about $200 a month, we are actually talking about some money that was there, and should have been spent on something else – we are not talking about money that could have been put aside for a rainy day.

So, the best thing that can help you stop smoking is not having enough money to buy the cigarettes. Yes, I had experienced those episodes in which I decided to buy a pack of cigarettes instead of buying something to eat, but that only goes to prove that nicotine is a real addiction. So, when it comes to quitting smoking, the best thing to do is to run out of money – that will definitely make you stop smoking. Naturally, this is only my opinion and you probably have a different take on things. If you want to add anything, please do not hesitate to use the comment section of the hub to share your opinion.