How much money can vaping save you?
The ever increasing price of cigarettes and tobacco is one of the reasons many of us start to think about switching to vaping. The health benefits of doing so are well proven and documented, but how much money could you actually save by switching to vaping?
There will be naysayers that will claim they haven’t saved anything or even say they have spent more, but I would suggest that is through a choice they’ve made. If you were a very light smoker of hand rolling tobacco and you’ve switched to buying an expensive hand-made vaping device every month, then maybe you will spend more. But that’s not the reality for most people.
How much does smoking cost?
Let’s take my own personal circumstances as an example. I used to smoke 25g of hand-rolling tobacco every 2 days, back then it was around $10 a packet. So $5 a day, $35 a week, approximately $150 a month. That’s about $1,800 a year, not including lighters, rolling papers etc.
How much does vaping cost?
I’ll compare this with what I spent the first year on e-cigarettes and vaping products. I’m using my first year because I seem to spend less as each year passes. So far this year I’ve bought very little, but will talk about that later.
So my first vaping kit cost me $70, I bought it from a local shop and that price included a few bottles of e-liquid. Later that week I spent $30 on a selection of e-liquids that I wanted to try. I made some terrible flavour choices with my first ones! After the first week, I realised that I wasn’t going back to smoking. I had never gone a whole week without wanting a cigarette, so vaping was clearly working for me, and I decided I needed to buy another kit. I was really worried that my device might fail when I needed it the most, and I was also constantly charging the one I had, so it made sense to buy another. I spent around the same on that one too, so another $70.
I was vaping mouth to lung and I was working in an office, so I could only vape when I used to smoke on my breaks. I wasn’t getting through huge amounts of liquid. I was using a 5ml tank and not finishing it during a day, so I’ll be generous and say I was vaping 4ml of e-liquid a day. Let’s work that out now, so we can forget about that for the rest of the year. It’s difficult to be accurate because I was taking advantage of special offers, discounts and sales when I could. But on balance I’m going to say I spent around $450 on e-liquid for the rest of the year.
The other constant thing I bought was coils for my tanks. A packet of 5 at $10 would last a couple of months, so lets say another $60 on coils. Again I was always taking advantage of discounts, and buying them with e-liquid to save on postage.
A few months after switching to vaping I joined the online forum POTV, a really fantastic group of people that provided help, motivation and a distraction from smoking. The downside was that I was being bombarded by talk of the latest products and liquids. I probably spent another $200 on different mods, tanks and various bits and pieces over the first year. At the end of the year to celebrate my one year smoke-free anniversary I treated myself to a fairly expensive box mod. It was almost $100 but I’m still using it over 2 years later, so a good investment I think!
When you add all that up it comes to $980, so a saving of $820 in my first year of switching to vaping. That’s a fair old chunk of money to me, but if I had smoked 20 traditional cigarettes a day, it would be a saving of more like $2,500. That’s a great holiday or a really nice second hand motorbike!
Ongoing costs
Each year I’ve spent less on vaping and I think you will too. You’ll become a more savvy shopper, you’ll buy less flavours that you don’t enjoy and you’ll have kit that you really like and won’t want to replace. You’ll have a little stash of e-liquid in your cupboard that will mean you won’t always need to buy it every month. So far this year I’ve only spent about $60 on vaping, so around $10 a month if you average it out. $25 of that was just because I wanted to try out a new pod system, it wasn’t an essential purchase.
How much you choose to spend on vaping is largely up to you, if you want your vaping to be as inexpensive as possible then it certainly can be, there are many ways to reduce the costs if you are thrifty and smart about your purchasing. A little research before buying something could save you money and a headache.
The savings of switching to vaping for me have been so big it’s changed my life from one where I was often worrying about money, to one where I rarely have to worry. The washing machine breaking isn’t a massive nightmare anymore, it’s still inconvenient and money I’d rather not spend, but it’s not the huge worry it would have been as a smoker. I can get by for the rest of the month being careful if I need to, simply because I don’t have to find $35 a week to buy tobacco.
And because I’m not always worrying about how I’m going to afford my tobacco towards the end of the month, switching to vaping has not only helped my physical health from deteriorating, it’s also done wonders for my mental health. Life is always less stressful when you have a little more money in the bank.
