Quitting Smoking Again – Day 20: Making Money

Posted on November 15, 2007
Filed Under Healthy Living, Quit Smoking, Saving Money |

Pushing right up against the big 3 week hurdle – it happens tomorrow. According to many stop smoking programs, reaching this point is significant for all sorts of reasons. It’s like if you make it this far, there’s no turning back.

For me, it’s like every day is a milestone. For sure that’s the case during early days. Recalling past attempts, I can remember milestones at the 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 14, 21, and 30 day, plus the 2, 3, and 6 month points.

The reality is that each day builds on the last, and what seems to happen is confidence increases each day. It’s sort of a double whammy, where in addition to gaining a days confidence, there’s also another days distance from that last smoke which associates a greater sense of failure with the idea of giving in.

stop smoking Something I reminded myself of again was the money-saving aspect of quitting. With the ever-increasing “sin” taxes assessed on things like cigarettes, it’s getting considerably more expensive to indulge the habit.

At an average of a pack a day, at approximately $4 per pack, I was spending around $1460 per year for the privilege of killing myself. Well now that $1460 is “found” money. It’s like getting a pay raise because at the end of the day, it’s not how much you make, but how much you keep.

The icing on the cake is I will not smoke 7,300 cigarettes next year, and the year after that, and the year after that, and the year after that, and…..

Something not so fun to calculate was that during my lifetime, I’ve already smoked nearly 300,000 cigarettes. And I did it one cigarette at a time.

For me, a big part of quitting is reversing that – by not smoking one at a time. Every day I don’t smoke, I don’t smoke about 20 cigarettes.

If you read my first post about this quit smoking journey, you’ll note that the success I’m having so far, immediately followed a failed attempt 2 weeks earlier that lasted only a day and a half.

But for anyone trying to quit this habit, any start is a good start. The only way to fail for sure is to stop trying. The silver lining of those two weeks is that I smoked significantly less.

I actually tracked it by day during the first week and though I ended up back at a pack a day by week 2, I stayed between a quarter, to a half pack during week one.

In fact, instead of smoking 140 cigarettes during that week, I smoked about 50, which means I didn’t smoke 90. That’s 4 ½ packs, or to put a financial spin on it, a rough savings of $18.

That may not sound like much, but that “failed” attempt curtailed the habit by almost two-thirds. I keep reminding myself, I didn’t smoke 300,000 cigarettes all at once, but one at a time.

Next quit smoking post: Week 6
Previous quit smoking post: Day 6

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Quitting Smoking Again – Day 20: Making Money

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