Who Has a Thicker Wallet and Fewer Expenses, a Smoker, or a Vaper?

Another Smoking vs. Vaping Duel

Ever since their introduction to the global market in the early 2000s, everyone is comparing e-cigarettes to regular tobacco ones, mainly on the health basis. Are they healthier, better, more socially acceptable, environment-friendly? These are just some of the questions that we are still not having answered thoroughly. However, in what we can dive into without the involvement of hard sciences is how these two habits affect your finances, and how they relate or differ regarding expenses.

Smoking: Burning Down Your Wallet

Not that smoking costs you health, but it costs you money as well – a lot of money. To give an example, if you smoke just a single pack of cigarettes per day, you will spend circa $20 on a daily level. Annually, this will sum up to $8000, even more, if you are smoking more expensive cigarettes more often. So, let us imagine a chronology of a smoker quitting to smoke (whether switching to vaping or not), and occurring expenses or savings in such a situation.

After a single day of not smoking, you will have an extra let’s say $25, after a week another 200$, in between one month and a whole year, you will save from around $800 up to $9000. And after ten years, you will have $100,000. We don’t need to tell you what you can do with this money.

Besides affecting a single smoker, smoking induces cost on a broader economic scale as well. Only in the USA, the financial cost of smoking is above $300 billion on an annual level. What does this mean? It says that around $170 billion goes to direct medical care for those suffering from smoking-induced illnesses, while $156 billion goes for those affected by secondhand smoke. You might think that your habit is affecting your wallet exclusively, but on a broader level, it increases costs for the society for healthcare and taxes – the things you have to pay for in addition to buying the cigarettes.

Vaping: Saving You Money While Keeping You Healthier

When it comes to vaping, statistics significantly differ. Even though at first glance vaping seems more expensive (given the fact that a single e-cigarette is more expensive than a few packs of regular ones), on a longer note vaping is far less costly and much more financially sustainable.

Vaping with popular e-cigarettes, vape pens or vaporizers are everlasting unless you want to upgrade the current device or obtain a fancier one for the sake of vape tricks or cloud chasing competitions. These devices, at least when it comes to the starter kits, will cost you between $25 and $145. Let’s suppose you would also buy an atomizer and empty tanks. Even with the most expensive device, you will still save more than a half than you would do if smoking.

Instead of always running around and out to buy cigarettes, with e-cigarettes you’ll simply need to purchase a bottle, or two, of a vape juice, or e-liquid. If you are to buy two bottles of e-juice at MigVapor and let’s say that the flavor is tobacco just as a more transparent substitute to smoking, you will spend around $20 over the course of two weeks. This money you would spend in a day or two if using tobacco.

So, who has a thicker wallet and healthier lungs, in the end, a smoker, or a vaper?

Photo: PBS

Alexa Mason

Alexa Mason is a freelance writer and internet entrepreneur. She is also a parent to two beautiful little girls. She chronicles her journey as a single mom working on building financial security.