While there's much well-deserved discussion about the health benefits of vaping, with the UK government considering prescribing e-cigarettes as a means of quitting smoking, one fantastic thing about vaping vs. smoking really needs mentioning: Vaping is much, much healthier for your wallet, too!
You've certainly noticed if you've bought cigarettes or a pouch of tobacco lately, but taxes increased on tobacco products in late October in the UK.
I decided to pull up my calculator app and figure up the cost of vaping vs. smoking over the course of a year and per month, based on the figures cited in the above article and prices in my shop for vaping products.
The results were a bit shocking, even to me, an experienced vaper. I had no idea how much money I've been saving over the years!
To calculate the cost of cigarette smoking in the UK, I used the lowest price for a pack of cigarettes cited by The Mirror: £9.41 for 20 cigarettes.
At that price, someone who smokes 10 cigarettes per day will spend about £143 per month, and about £1,717 per year, on their habit.
Someone who smokes a pack a day is going to spend twice as much, obviously -- a whopping £286 per month, and over £3,400 per year! For that price, a family of four could afford a week's holiday in the Scottish Highlands -- and have enough left over to pay most of the cost of another week-long family holiday in the Peak District.
That's bleak.
So let's get into what vaping costs. For this example, I didn't want to pick the absolute cheapest options, because that's not really fair. So I projected costs for someone who bought a high-quality vape like the geek vape Obelisk 60, replaced the coils roughly every three weeks, and vaped 40 ml of e-juice per week.
One caveat: These estimates include the cost of a new, high-quality vape every year. You're probably not going to replace your vape every year. As I've noted before, I still use my UWELL Nunchuku that I bought four years ago -- it's still in perfect working condition; in fact, it still looks practically new.
So let's crunch some numbers:
High-quality e-cigarette device: £70
Coils, replaced about every three weeks, at a cost of £20 for five, over the course of a year: £80
E-juice, consumed at a rate of 40 ml per week: £10 per week, or £520 per year
That works out to just £670 per year to vape, or just £56 per month!
And that's not the cheapest it could be: Those on a budget, and who don't vape constantly like I do, could spend £40 on a basic starter kit, £15 per month on juice and £5 per month on coils and spend a measly £320 per year, or £27 per month, on vaping.
So it's obvious that vaping's not only healthier for your body, it's healthier on your bank account, too.
Stephen “Tex” English: tex@thejuicewarehouse.co.uk; Insta: @tex_vapes
