Cost of a Habit

What smoking or vaping costs over the years, and what that money would have grown into if it had been invested instead of spent.

Spent over the period

—

Spent over the period—

A year—

A month—

Had you invested it—

Of which, interest—

How this was worked out

The formula

total = daily spend × 365 × years · invested = the same amount as a monthly contribution

Where it comes from

Enter what you spend a day: the daily pack, the vape pods, or both together. The annual cost is that spend times 365, and the running total simply projects it over the years you choose. The second figure treats the same money as a monthly contribution to an investment, which is the honest comparison: not stopping and putting the money in a drawer, but putting it to work.

How to work it out by hand

Multiply what you spend a day by 365 for the annual cost
Multiply that by the years you want to project
For the comparison, work out the future value of that monthly contribution

What is worth knowing

The sum works the same for any habit with a daily cost: coffee from a machine, lunch out, subscriptions you do not use. The point is not to moralise about small spending but to see the whole figure, because a lot of decisions change when the number stops being “five a day” and becomes “twenty-three thousand over ten years”. With tobacco there is also a cost no calculator captures: the health one, which is by far the larger of the two.

Frequently asked questions

What does a pack a day cost?

At five a pack, 1,825 a year and over 18,000 in ten.

What would it be if I invested it?

At 5 % a year, that five a day would become around 23,600 over ten years.

Why is the invested figure higher than the spent one?

Compound interest: each contribution earns a return, and those returns earn more in turn.