Quitting cigarettes could save smokers over £2,500 a year

Cigarette smokers could save over £2,500 a year if they quit, according to new figures released by the British Heart Foundation (BHF).

Today (March 13th) is No Smoking Day and the BHF has taken the opportunity to show people how much money they could be saving should they choose to kick the habit.

The charity has estimated that an individual who smokes 20 cigarettes a day could save £7 a day, £49 a week, £210 a month and £2,555 a year by quitting altogether.

Cigarette prices have shot up in recent years as the government has incrementally added more taxation to them. This has lead to many smokers being financially worse off at a time when money is getting tighter and tighter.

More and more people are struggling with debt and are looking for ways to make savings in their daily lives. Buying cigarettes can leave a large dent in peoples' finances, especially those who smoke a considerable amount every day.

Being in debt is a stressful situation for anyone, therefore many turn to cigarettes as a form of stress-relief. This naturally makes the situation worse as buying the cigarettes leads to less money being in their pockets.

The report from the BHF claims that two thirds of all smokers want to quit but are struggling with their addiction. Some 80 per cent of the 2,000 smokers surveyed said that they have tried and failed to quit without long-term success. According to the BHF smokers make an average of just over four quit attempts.

However the reasons for quitting don't appear to be solely focused around health benefits. A quarter of the participants said that the financial impact of smoking was more of a motivator to quit than the long term health implications.

Just over one in three (34 per cent) said they feel guilty about the amount of money they spend on cigarettes and a similar number stated they try to avoid thinking about it.

In order to make people realise the financial implication of smoking, the BHF has taken to changing cigarette packaging for a day. The packaging will show how much money people could save by showing them like-for-like products they could be spending the money on instead, like cinema tickets for example.

Director of policy and communications at the BHF Betty McBride said: "The tobacco giants are notoriously protective about their slick cigarette packaging – here’s a bit of slick that does some good for once. We need to up our game if we are going to help people beat their addiction to tobacco by finding new ways to reach out to them."

Smokers who are struggling with debt could soon look into beating their addiction after these figures from the BHF show just how much money they are spending on their habit. By quitting smoking people can become debt free at a much quicker rate, and become a lot healthier in the process.

The BHF expects 750,000 people to try to quit after No Smoking Day.

By Joe White

Find out more about money management on the ClearDebt blog.