the patch-day 20

An obvious point about quitting smoking with not so obvious consequences: the money saved is more than just that spent on smokes.

I like to be comfortable and relaxed when I smoke. If I am alone I like to be sitting down and to have something in front of me to read, preferably a newspaper (most items in a newspaper can be read in the time it takes to have a smoke, plus I'm a bit of a news junky). Coffee is an absolute must. Considering these two qualifications I tend to spend a fair amount of time at cafe's that have an outdoor patio.

The literature that came with my patch suggests staying away from places and situations that I associate with smoking. So, there goes the outdoor cafe. There goes the extra coffee or two a day. There goes the newspaper.

Over the past twenty days I figure I have saved $100 in cigarettes, $35 in coffee and $10 in newspapers. That's a total of $145 that I can easily categorize. There are additional savings that aren't so easy to tally, like the Nibs or Twizzlers that I pick up when I get my cigarettes.

Just being a smoker meant that I usually had cash on hand if I needed to get more smokes. That cash on hand meant that I could buy other things impulsively. I think I've been to a bank machine twice in the past three weeks. No extra cash, no impulse buying. How much am I saving because of this? No idea, but it's likely somewhere between the amount spent on coffee and the amount spent on newspapers, say $20.

Now that I am actually going through the process of looking at the cost of my habit I'm actually kind of shocked. It's starting to look like my smoking habit cost me close to $60 a week. Yikes. You do the math on annual savings. I'm not even going to factor in the cost on the health care system.  posted by jmd ¶ Saturday, June 19, 2004