The Rocky Mountain Collegian

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Coins to Cash

September 12th, 2007

What Smoking Can Really Cost You?

Everyone, both smoker and non-smoker, has seen or heard the facts and figures that are related to smoking. A few hundred dollars are lost here, and a few thousand dollars over this amount of time, and you could have done this with that money. However, I have yet to hear or see anyone replace smoking with investing, which to me see like it should be the on the top of the list.

Let’s say you are an 18-year-old college freshman who has just started to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. Averaging out the cost of those cigarettes, I will put the price at $4.50 a pack and the total cost for a pack a day at $135.00 a month. Now, if you were to place an initial investment of $135.00 into a strong Mutual Fund, say a %15.00 return, and continue doing so throughout your college career, you may be surprised.

This cigarette replacing investment, if continued every month for 4 years, would give you a return of $9,161.00. On the flip side, a continued smoking habit over this amount of time would cost you just over $6,400.00. I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that smokers have the potential to make some pretty impressive gains.

Now just for fun, say you were able to remain in said Mutual Fund for 50 years, still somehow giving you a 15% return and you placing your extra $135.00 into the account every month. Well, after those 50 years, when you are approaching 70 and wanting to vacation or splurge on the grandchildren, you can do both. You will have now accumulated a massive return of over $19,000,000!