Financial Cost of Smoking in California

Financial Cost of Smoking in California Makes it 13th Highest in Nation

Did you make a New Year’s Resolution to stop smoking? How’s it going? If you’re struggling, this might help. Smoking costs us more than $600 billion per year, according to the personal-finance website WalletHub, which recently released its report on The Real Cost of Smoking by State, to help encourage the 46 million tobacco users in the U.S. to kick this dangerous and expensive habit.

WalletHub calculated the potential monetary losses brought on by smoking and exposure to secondhand smoke, including the lifetime and annual costs of a pack of cigarettes per day, health care expenditures, income losses and other costs.

The Financial Cost of Smoking in California (1=Highest, 25=Avg.):

Overall rank for California: 13th
Out-of-Pocket Cost per Smoker – $192,720 (Rank: 14th)
Financial-Opportunity Cost per Smoker – $3,266,980 (Rank: 14th)
Health-Care Cost per Smoker – $210,735 (Rank: 14th)
Income Loss per Smoker – $794,059 (Rank: 6th)
Other Costs per Smoker – $17,326 (Rank: 43rd)
Total Cost Over Lifetime per Smoker: $4,481,821
Total Cost per Year per Smoker: $93,371

“Smoking has greatly declined in the U.S. in recent decades, but nearly 50 million people still use tobacco products,” according to Chip Lupo, WalletHub Analyst. “Buying cigarettes for your entire adult life can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars, but that number pales in comparison to the hidden costs of smoking. Over a lifetime, smokers lose out on millions of dollars they could have made if they’d invested the money they spent on tobacco. Smokers also tend to have lower wages, higher health care costs and higher home insurance premiums.”

Smoking will cost you the most in New York, where the average smoker will incur a staggering cost of more than $5.4 million over a lifetime, according to Lugo. Only around $247,000 of that is the out-of-pocket cost paid for tobacco products, though. The biggest contributor is the financial opportunity cost; spending $247,000 on cigarettes in New York will slash your retirement budget by a whopping $4.2 million, assuming you would have otherwise invested money in the S&P 500. The remaining lifetime costs include $276,000 in health care expenses, $7,800 in increased home insurance premiums and $703,000 in lost income due to smoking issues.”

To view the full report and your state or the District’s rank, please visit:
https://wallethub.com/edu/the-financial-cost-of-smoking-by-state/9520