Calling it quits - it's going to be a long day

New Years Eve - I made a resolution to quit smoking. As I bought my last two packs of cigarettes at the gas station, I turned to my son and partner and said these were the last two packs I was going to buy. The time has come to give it up. I made a resolution, not just for the sake of making one, but I honestly thought about this one long and hard. It makes perfect sense to quit now. I'm on a mission to fix my finances by any means necessary. Considering it costs over 6 dollars a pack where I live for cigarettes, all I had to do was logically think about how much money I could save if I didn't smoke. If you're a pack a day smoker like I am, all you have to do is figure out the math. I never go into a convenience store, or gas station and buy just one pack, I always get 2, just to make sure I have one for the upcoming day. Seeing as I'm not the type of smoker who smokes them down to the filter, I tend to waste quite a bit of that money that I'm spending. So, as I squash them out, halfway, I had a tendency to think I was doing myself some good by not smoking them all the way down. All it does is cost me in the long run.

Like I said previously, every time I went into the store, it was 2 packs - seeing as I always had the crutch of another pack waiting, and I only smoked them halfway (for health reasons ya know), I was taking a trip back to the same store the very next day - to get my 2 packs, to ensure I had one for the next day - Now comes the math -

2 packs - $12.34 a day X 7 days a week =86.38 a week. You know how much money I could have been saving all this time had I just walked in a bought a carton for the week? The trouble is, that 86 bucks sneaks up on you when you are addicted. You don't mind plopping down the 12 dollars and change daily, but when you have to walk in the store and pull out your credit card to buy a carton at nearly 60 bucks, that's where you stop and think, do I really want to spend 60 bucks on a carton? If you are like me and have trouble swallowing 60 dollars coming out of your bank account all at once for cigarettes, you most likely wouldn't do it either. Every now and again I would use a credit card and figure that I would pay it off at the end of the month, but never did. So, after burning up that carton in about a week, you went back to the 2 packs a day again at around 86 bucks a week.

Now let's consider the savings if we quit altogether - cold turkey, no substitute for the nicotine.

We'll do it on a monthly basis just to show how much money is literally "going up in smoke" -

86.38 a week X 4 weeks = $345.52 a month X 12 months = $4146.24 a year - is that not insane?
Even if you went the cheaper way - buying cartons every week, you still end up with this -

60 bucks a week X 4 weeks = 240.00 a month X 12 months = $2880 a year -what was I thinking all these years of smoking? I was tossing more than a grand a year out in the street when I flicked away all those butts.

It's all about how you want to take on something. I can think of better things to do with that kind of money. 4 grand could make a nice dent in my credit card bills. I'm going to keep this promise and take that 86 bucks a week and pay off some debt. It sure will make a nicer Christmas for my loved ones this year.