March 18, 2010

The Numerous Benefits of Quitting Smoking

If you’re thinking of becoming a nonsmoker, you may already have in mind some of the benefits of quitting smoking. But there’s a good chance that there are many that you haven’t considered, and some that might actually be surprising to you! Let’s take a look at a few of those here.

First, consider the financial benefits of quitting smoking. If you smoke a pack a day at $3.50 per pack, that’s $1,277.50 every year on cigarettes. That’s over a hundred dollars every month just for smokes. Imagine what you could spend an extra hundred dollars on every single month! You could help pay down your mortgage or car note, or maybe even afford a recreational vehicle for yourself. Adding up the financial benefits of quitting smoking also means considering what you could do by saving that money, not just spending it. If you put that money in an interest bearing account that pays 4%, after ten years you would have deposited over $12,000 of your own money and would have earned almost $3,000 in interest! The financial benefits of quitting smoking are virtually equal to what someone should be putting into their retirement accounts or can go a long way toward saving for retirement, a child’s college fund, and so on. You don’t just avoid throwing money away on cigarettes but you also have that money you can spend on something else or save for the future. These financial benefits of quitting smoking might seem minor if you consider the cost of just one pack of cigarettes but when you add it up for years and years and years, you see how significant those benefits really are.

Of course the health benefits of quitting smoking are too many to even mention. Smoking is tied not just to lung cancer but to virtually every other type of cancer there is. Nicotine is quickly absorbed through the bloodstream and from there travels to every cell of the body. Smoking is also associated with infertility, heart attacks, increased risk of stroke, elevated blood pressure, and a host of lung diseases and conditions. The benefits of quitting smoking extend not just to the smoker but to everyone around him or her, as secondhand smoke is almost as bad as the smoke you inhale from the cigarette itself. This is especially true of children as their immune system is not fully developed yet and they’re more susceptible to illness and disease.

You may already have in mind some specific benefits of quitting smoking or may have already experienced the ill effects of smoking, or have seen how it’s damaged someone else you know. You may be concerned about your budget or your health or the health of your family and children. Whatever your reason, the time to quit is now. There are no benefits to smoking and yet many benefits of quitting smoking. So consider these benefits carefully and make sure you have them in mind to keep you going when you do quit.

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