The Cost of Smoking

MSN Money wrote a recent article about the costs incurred by smoking. Click here to read the article. Take a look at some of the ways that smoking can hurt personal finances and people's jobs:

Costs to an Individual smoker:

• A pack-a-day smoker spends about $31.43 per week on cigarettes, or $1,635 per year
  
• Life Insurance for a nonsmoker is between $570 to $1,035 in premiums per year but as much as $4,250 for a pack-a-day smoker
  
• Non-smokers will receive at least a 10% discount when shopping for homeowners insurance.
  
• If 40-year-old quits smoking today and puts the savings into a 401(k) earning 9% a year, he or she would have accumulate almost $250,000 by age 70!!
  

Costs to all of us:

• 5% of employers prefer to hire nonsmokers and 1% do not hire smokers at all
  
• 5% of companies charge smokers more for health-care premiums
  
• Smokers cost the economy $97.6 billion a year in lost productivity due to premature death, as well as an additional $96.7 billion on public and private health care combined
  
• Every American household spends $630 a year in federal and state taxes because of smoking
  

Quitting smoking is not just good for health, but it's good for the checkbook too!