So you want to be a millionaire? If you smoke or are thinking about it – I will give you at least $1 million reasons not to start. For the sake of discussion, I am going to use me as an example. I have smoked for over 20 years and frankly I enjoyed it. It wasn’t until I finally got it through my head about the health risks to me, my family and the rising costs that I finally decided to quit.
You all know or should know about the health risks and I will not rehash it. What I want to talk to you about is the financial impact. I smoked 2 packs of cigarettes per day and on a good Friday night out on the town it could sometimes be as much as 3 packs.
Ok.. here it comes. Two packs of cigarettes per day at an average cost of $3.50 per pack multiplied by seven days equals $49.00 per week or $2555.00 for one year. Now lets take a teenager at age 18 who starts to smoke and lets also assume they were to stop at age 65 on retirement which is 47 years. 47 years x $2555.00 = $120,085.00 spent on cigarettes at todays prices.
Now a hundred and twenty thousand dollars is in itself not enough to make you rich but you could buy some pretty nice stuff for that amount. The magic is in a little thing called compound interest. Assuming that instead of smoking – You took that same two packs per day or seven dollars and invested it in a mutual fund. Let’s also assume that you invested it in an index mutual fund which over the lifetime of the stock market has averaged 10% per year. After 47 years you would retire with $2,730,489.02. That almost $3 Million dollars. How is that for an incentive to not smoke?
What about the rest of us who have smoked for 20 plus years? A man or woman who quit at age 40 under the same scenario who save $282,615.51. Now that’s not a million dollars but it would still buy a pretty nice home. What is even more astounding is that these figures are based on today’s prices and don’t even account for inflation over the same amount of time.
Even if you are not interested in investing the money saved from smoking then think about this: $2555.00 applied one time each year to a $200,000.00 mortgage would cut 10 years off of a 30 year loan. You would be paying your home off in one-third the time.
The bottom line: If your health and family aren’t enough to make you stop – Think about why your not living next door to the rich and famous. I hope this gives you food for thought about all the extras in life you are giving up by smoking.
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