Smoking Cost Calculator

Cigarettes a day

Price of a pack

Cigarettes in a pack

Years of smoking

Savings rate, % a year

Result

A year$54,788.00
A month$4,566.00
A day$150.00
Spent in total$547,875.00
Would be in savings$835,332.00
Cigarettes smoked54,788

This result is informational only and is not professional advice.

A pack a day is a car in a decade

Works out what smoking costs a day, a month and a year, how much has gone in total, and what the same money would have become in a savings account.

A pack a day looks trivial next to other spending, but the arithmetic is stubborn: two hundred a day is six thousand a month and seventy-three thousand a year. Over a decade it adds up to the price of a serviceable used car.

The alternative is more interesting still. The same money paid monthly into an account at eight percent grows considerably larger through compounding — and that figure sits here next to the amount spent.

What this calculator shows

The cost of cigarettes a day, a month and a year
The total spent over the whole period and the number of cigarettes smoked
What the same money would have become in an account with monthly deposits

What to keep in mind

Only the cigarettes are counted. Everything alongside them — from lighters to healthcare — is left out.
The savings figure assumes the same deposit every month at a constant rate; inflation and rising tobacco prices are not modelled.

FAQs

How much does smoking cost a year?

At a pack a day and 200 a pack, roughly 73,000 a year. At fifteen cigarettes a day, about 55,000.

Why is the savings figure larger than the amount spent?

Compounding: every deposit starts earning, and over ten years the accumulated interest adds roughly half again to what was paid in.

Does this account for rising prices?

No, it uses today's pack price throughout. Real past spending was lower and future spending will be higher — tobacco duty rises almost every year.

What other costs come with smoking?

Higher life insurance premiums, healthcare costs and lost working days. In money terms they usually exceed the price of the cigarettes themselves.

Worked example

Fifteen a day for ten years

Input: 15 cigarettes a day, 200 a pack, 10 years, 8% a year

Output: 54,788 a year and 547,875 over ten years

Note: In an account with monthly deposits the same money would have reached about 835,000. And that is before counting the almost 55,000 cigarettes smoked over the decade.

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