Quit smoking to save your life and (big) money
Kicking the habit can result in savings of hundreds of thousands of rand, if not millions, over a lifetime
One of the most popular new year’s resolutions is to quit smoking. Besides the obvious health benefits, the amount of money you can save over decades is eye-watering, with some people describing quitting smoking as giving yourself a salary increase. The savings are many-fold. First, the amount of money you will save on life insurance premiums as a non-smoker is no small fry. Then there is the saving from frequent visits to the doctor for illnesses linked to smoking. To demonstrate the hard cash burden of smoking, if you were to invest every cent you spend on packets of cigarettes into a simple savings account, the returns over a decade or more are enough to fund a dream holiday. Park that money in a more tailored and aggressive investment vehicle and you could be looking at millions over the course of three or four decades. Of course, this is an academic exercise, but what it demonstrates how much more you could save by kicking a simple habit that has become part of your ordinary ex...
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