WANT TO SAVE OVER A MILLION BUCKS? STOP SMOKING!

By Miriam Raftery

January 19, 2016 (San Diego’s East County) -- Just in time for Tobacco-Free Awareness Week, WalletHub, a financial website, has analyzed the cumulative cost of smoking a pack of cigarettes daily over several decades, along with health care expenditures, income losses and related expenses.

Hold onto your hat – your lifetime cost as a smoker in California totals over $1.5 million dollars!

That includes:

• Out-of-pocket cost – $101,917
• Financial opportunity cost – $963,737
• Healthcare cost – $182,119
• Income loss – $250,875
• Other costs – $13,871

So if you kick the habit early and save what you would have puffed away, you’ll be a millionaire by the time you retire—and a lot healthier, too.