Smoking may very well be keeping you in the poor house. How so? Well, according to the WHO (World Health Organization), there is a definite link between poverty and tobacco use. Studies have shown that not only is it those with lower incomes who tend to smoke more, but smoking makes poor people even poorer, thus causing a seemingly endless vicious cycle.
Here are 4 major ways in which smoking contributes to financial difficulties:
Cost of Cigarettes Themselves
The average smoker spends several hundred dollars every month on cigarettes alone. This means that over one year, thousands of dollars which could have been invested and served to increase personal wealth, have literally been blown up in smoke.
Health Costs More for Smokers
In its fact sheet entitled “Smoking and Overall Health”, the CDC (Center for Disease Control), talks of the actual cost of smoking. It mentions that the overall health of smokers is worse than that of non-smokers and that since they get sick more often, they need more frequent doctor’s visits and hospitalizations.
This means that due to health issues, workers who smoke take more sick days than non-smokers, and they also need to purchase more medications. Those extra costs ad hundreds of dollars to the initial amount of money that a smoker spends on the cigarettes themselves.
Insurance Costs More for Smokers
Since they are more prone to getting life-threatening diseases, smokers can pay up to twice as much for life insurance premiums than their non-smoking counterparts. Homeowner’s insurance may also be more expensive, since many providers consider smoker’s homes to be at higher risk for unfortunate events such as fires, for example.
Lower Resale Value for Homes & Cars
According to the online newspaper Barrie Today, properties that smell like cigarette smoke are 85% harder to sell, and the resale value of a property owned by a smoker can be affected by as much as 27%. This means that if you are a smoker and are trying to sell your home or your car, you will likely be getting thousands less, if not tens of thousands – as in the case of the sale of a house or condo – than if you were a non-smoker.
We’ve seen here just a few of the ways in which smoking is probably harming your finances. Why not grab a pencil and paper and sit down to calculate precisely how much your habit is costing you in cigarettes, in insurance surcharges, in lost wages, in medication, and in devalued property?
Just think how much money you will have saved by the same time next year by deciding to quit today. No doubt you could have several thousand dollars more in your bank account. So what are you waiting for?