What are the financial benefits of quitting smoking?

What are the financial benefits of quitting smoking?

Linda Hyder Ferry (Associate Professor, Preventive Medicine and Family Medicine, Loma Linda University School of Medicine) gives expert video advice on: Why should I quit smoking?; What are the health benefits of quitting smoking?; What are the immediate health benefits of quitting smoking? and more...

I have had many patients tell me they'd be willing to pay any price to be able to smoke, even if it means the increasing cost of retail cigarettes. They say, "man, when I started to smoke cigarettes were 25 cents or 50 cents a pack, and now they're pushing $4.00 and up." You do the math. One pack a day, two packs a day, 3 to 4 dollars a day, 8 to 10 dollars a day, for 365 days, for however many years you think you'll smoke before you quit. What if you put that money into compounded interest or in the stock market for 10 years, or 20 years, instead of burning it up into smoke and watching it dissipate into the atmosphere, and destroy your lungs in the mean time, and the rest of your body. How much would that be? We estimate that if someone would quit smoking before they're 30, and then invest all the money they would have spent on cigarettes from this point on, they would actually have nearly a half a million dollars that they could invest in their retirement or their children.