Year after year, smokers continue to find themselves further out-of-pocket due to inflation and increased taxation on tobacco products. Compare this to vaping, where if anything, we’ve seen a decrease in prices due to the sheer availability of more affordable products. With high-quality e-liquids available from as little as £1 a bottle, is this any surprise? Vaping is without a doubt a cheaper alternative to traditional cigarettes, we know this already. What we’re going to look at is how the cost of smoking continues to appreciate against the cost of vaping each year and the financial position smokers could be in a few years down the line.
We’re not here to shame smokers, as we’ve presumably all come from that same past, we’re just attempting to open your eyes to the extent of which your habit affects your wallet. Enough talk, let’s get started.
1. How much does smoking cost each year?
The UK is one of the most expensive places in Europe to be a smoker. The average price of cigarettes has continually risen over the past decade and shows no sign of halting. In fact, with our government promising a smoke-free England by 2030, it seems to be very much within the governments best interest to continue with the upward price trajectory.
A few years ago, we published an article and a video on this very same topic and it’s crazy to see just how fast our original calculations have become obsolete due to increased prices. We originally used £9 as the average price of a 20-pack, when the current day reality will have you spending closer to the £11.00-11.50 mark. For argument’s sake, we’ll keep the average price at £11 and go from here.
So… that works out at £77 per week, £334 per month and a total of £4,015 annually. Not pleasant, is it?
2. How much does vaping cost each year?
So, we’re going to include everything from your first vape device, to all your e-liquids and accessories that will be required for a full year of vaping. Beginning with the vape device, you should pick yourself up a starter kit bundle such as the Aspire Nautilus AIO Pod Kit which is perfectly suited to newcomers. This retails at £24.99 and even comes with a free shortfill if you order soon enough.
Next, we’re going to need some e-liquid to get you going. Our original Vapable range of flavours retail at £2.99 per 10ml bottle, in the context of a user going through two full bottles a week, this totals £6 per week, £26 a month and £312 a year. The final cost you’re going to need to factor in is the replacements pods for your device what’ll need to be replaced once a month on average. We stock these pods at £4.99 per item, so that works out at £60 a year when rounded.
When you combine all the costs, we have a grand total of £397. You should note that we haven’t factored in the single replacement pod which comes included in the starter kit and also the free shortfill. These factors would bring the price down a tad more. Regardless, the savings are still significant.
3. The verdict
So, I’m sure you’ve already looked at the two figures from both calculations and can see a substantial price difference. A switch to vaping boasts over £3,600 in annual savings compared to smoking.
Let’s quickly compare these figures to those calculated in our video on this matter which we published back in May of 2018. We can see that our annual cost calculation for smoking was £3,685 a year, so in just two and a half years, smokers have become an extra £330 out-of-pocket. Now, look at the annual price of vaping which we originally calculated as £440. This shows that not only is smoking become a more and more expensive habit, but vaping is becoming cheaper.
Need we say more?
We hope this has helped shine a light on the current state of affairs within this space. Although the negative health effects that come with smoking should eventually heed sufficient warning, for some, the financial aspect is what’ll give them the final push of motivation they need to cut the habit. As someone who has made the switch from smoking to vaping in the past 12 months, I can speak from personal experience on this.
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See you in the next article, guys!