The Cost of Smoking

Yea, yea, yea, we all get it. Smoking is bad for you, and everyone should quit right away! But how bad for you is it really? We all know our two greatest assets are time and money, and we all know that cigarettes have a negative impact on both of these. Yet, according to theglobalstatistics.com, about 28.8 million adult Americans continue to smoke! Why is this?

Smoking is also becoming less “cool” in communities, which makes it harder for a smoker to grow their network and meet new friends. Kind of hard to connect with that hot thing at the bar if they can’t stand the smell of our breath. Chances are they will take more of a liking to the non-smoker who comes around while we dip outside for a quick burn. That’s ok, we attracted a few homeless guys while outside anyway.

There’s also a psychological tie to smoking that negatively impacts our behavior. Multiple studies have shown that long-term use of nicotine can worsen anxiety and depression. In the short-term, a smoker’s mood and stress levels are exasperated even from a small deprivation from nicotine. Ever sit next to a smoker on a flight when the plane has landed and everyone is waiting on that one idiot to get moving? Watch out!

In this post, I want to measure the direct influence of smoking on our lives. While the mental, emotional, and social impact of smoking are incredibly important; I wanted to center in on the physical and financial impact of smoking while focused on the numbers. Hey, this is kind of a money blog after all right? 🤪

Full disclosure, this post is more for me than it is for you. I’ve recently quit smoking and continue to look for motivation to continue being smoke-free. Come along this journey with me, let’s dive in!

The actual cost of a pack of cigarettes can pretty drastically vary from place to place, but also from time to time. Back when I was 18, one pack at the local gas station cost something like $5-$6, while today at the same place they are closer to $18. Granted, I live in a higher cost of living area, so in the last few years I’ve seen them as low as $7-$8 in other cities while traveling. I’m sure locals in these LCOL areas would know where to find them even cheaper.

For the sake of keeping things simple we’ll go with a pack of 20 cigarettes costing an even $10 for our purposes. Now, I know plenty of smokers that go over 1 pack per day; and in my personal life I can testify that the amount smoked in a given week will vary due to a million factors. I always smoked more when stress levels were high, while on vacation, or really when engaging in activities outside the normal flow of life. All that said, it’s probably safe to say I averaged 5 packs per week, and I smoked for 20 years.

So, the equation is simple right? $10 per pack X 5 packs per week = $50 per week or $200 per month. That’s easy enough to swallow, especially with all the “enjoyment” cigarettes bring… right? Hold on a second. $200 per month X 12 months per year = $2,400 🤔. $2,400 x 20 years = $48,000. 😯 That’s a lot of money!

But that’s not all! What if instead of spending this $200 per month, I decided to invest it in the S&P 500 (averaging roughly 10% annual returns) instead? Let’s hop on over to calculator.net to check this out:

🤯😶😲🤮

So… smoking has cost me (to date) almost $150k.

According to this study out of the U.K., life expectancy shrinks 20 minutes overall (17 minutes for men, 22 minutes for women) for every cigarette smoked! Earlier studies from the 2000s had stated that number was around 11 minutes. This newer research is showing a higher effect due to differing statistics on today’s population. Average daily cigarette consumption among smokers has gone down, average lifespan of non-smokers has risen, and other socioeconomic positions. The good news is that the number of smoking related deaths has fallen in recent years.

Now, I’ll be the first to argue that sometimes claims like this are kind of BS. A lot of these numbers are based off averages, which can get a bit messy. We all know the 90-year-old man who smoked his entire life, and there are plenty of smoking related deaths to light smokers at a young age. The truth is that smoking increases your risk of catching one of the fatal diseases, like heart disease, respiratory diseases, stroke, and (of course) cancer.

So, will each cigarette take exactly 20 minutes off your life? Probably not. That said, for the sake of this exercise, let’s roll with it for now.

20 minutes X 20 cigarettes (1 pack) = 400 minutes (6.66 hours) per pack

400 minutes X 20 packs per month = 8,000 minutes (133.33 hours/5.55 days)

8,000 minutes X 12 months per year = 96,000 minutes (1600 hours/66.66 days)

96,000 minutes X 20 years = 1,920,000 minutes (32,000 hours/1,333.33 days/3.65 yrs)

🤯😶😲🤮

So… smoking has cost me (to date) almost 4 years.

A while back we utilized the framework of “Life Essence” in order to evaluate value in a particular purchase. Let’s use this same framework again, instead this time to measure loss, to tie this all together.

Good ol’ Uncle Bill is having trouble putting the memory cap on to remember exactly what I was getting paid way back when. I do remember in high school (prior to 18 years old) getting a raise to $6 per hour because minimum wage went up! 😂 Regardless, the variance of my pay over the last 20 years has been pretty significant. For the sake of argument, let’s stick with the example I already laid out where $80k per year was actually $13.34 per hour.

So, over the course of 20 years, smoking has cost me (including opportunity cost) a whopping $144,797.35 (as shown above).

$144,797.35 / $13.34 = 10,854.37 working hours

As also shown above, smoking has cost me 32,000 hours in lifespan due to physical health.

10,854.37 working hours + 32,000 lifespan hours = 42,854.37 hours

42,854.37 hours / 24 hours = 1,785.60 days

1,785.60 / 365 = 4.89 years

So… total… between hours worked and lifespan hours lost due to health… I’ve already lost almost 5 years of my life! 😓 These are the end years, where I’ll presumably already be financially independent and retired! If your argument is that you don’t want those “deathbed” years anyway, chances are likely that those “deathbed” years are just going to come 5 years sooner. It’s not like these smoking related deaths hit you like a bus; they are all a painful journey I wish nobody to travel.

As I stated earlier, if money and health risks were of real concern to smokers, nobody would still be smoking. I’m not quite sure I knew the extent of what smoking was costing me though. It’s my hope that this little experiment entices you to plug in some of your own numbers and inspires you to quit for good. It will absolutely increase your quality of life in the long run, but more importantly, it will increase your quality of life right now!

That example of a lunatic after a plane lands? That was me. I recently flew for the first time since quitting, and it was quite a different experience. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t running for the exit like my life depended on it. Instead of mowing down an old lady, I helped her grab the hat box out of the overhead bin and patiently waited as she collected herself and moved down the aisle.

Disclaimer: Addiction to cigarettes is not a valid excuse to run over an old lady 🤪😂

Smoking is an addiction, not a habit or a crutch, so the ability to stop can be more difficult than other behaviors. No ice cream on weekdays sounds a hell of a lot more appealing to most smokers. Not sure if all smokers know this, but that feeling of relief you get from that drag of a cig? Did you know that non-smokers feel that all the time? You know what they say, nicotine is a hell of a drug!

Stay classy Solos! ✌️

Over the past year of writing these blog posts, I developed different ways of incorporating time management into my already busy life in order to ideate and actually write these down. I can’t speak for everyone with a blog, but many of these take 6-8+ hours to write, so I started stacking blog posts ahead of time in order to accommodate for the weeks that I would not have time to write. This way, if I’m out of town or if something unexpected comes up, I can still post every single week since I usually have several posts in the hopper.

Everything written above was completed 7/7/2025, the date of writing this postscript is 8/24/2025. I unfortunately suffered a heart attack on 7/12/2025, ironically almost exactly one month after quitting smoking. The “main” reason for the heart attack was due to genetics (according to a myriad of tests and doctors). That said, it would be absolutely foolish (maybe even a little crazy 🤪) to discount 20 years of smoking as one of the contributors to my current health troubles.

On Monday morning (8/18/2025) I passed out while brushing my teeth, and only just yesterday got discharged from the hospital. It appears that I had gotten extremely low blood pressure caused by a negative reaction to heart medication post heart attack. Unfortunately, the physical health issues appear to be stacking.

Today I am completely out of blog posts in the hopper, and not a lot of time to invest in writing. For this reason, I must take a break from the blog for the next few months. Time is looking very limited, both in the near term (between a myriad of new doctor’s appointments, extra time necessary for my new diet, and maintaining a full-time job), and possibly even the long-term 😬.

While I take the time to concentrate on my own physical, mental, and even emotional health; I encourage every reader to take a little time to focus on their own health in a big picture point of view. The point of this blog was to encourage everyone to live an overall healthier life, and lord knows we all have something to work on. I did my best to explain this with the 5POH, but some of it may have been lost along the way.

Anyway, keep on rockin’ Solos! And as a great man once said: I’LL BE BACK!