Alcohol and tobacco use are drains on personal finances and rip wholes into people’s wallets and bank accounts.
A new study released Tuesday by the personal finance organization WalletHub gives us a rough idea of the fact that tobacco, like alcohol use, expenditures are ripping wholes into the wallets and bank accounts of people.
Analysts calculated potential losses, to determine what a smoker’s addiction costs over a lifetime. The study included smoking-related health care data, income sacrificed to lost work and reduced job opportunities, along with other associated data.
When all US federal state data are combined, for the sake of a US national average, the personal financial cost per individual is staggering.
We estimate the financial cost of smoking in the US to be roughly $1.6 million per smoker over a lifetime,” the study’s analysts wrote.
Just the out-of-pocket cost for cigarettes amounts to $115,214. Smoking-related health care costs average $164,876; income loss averages $220,855. Financial opportunity cost – including the loss of financial growth that could result from properly investing money lost to smoking – averages $1.089 million over a lifetime.
The cost of smoking, over a lifetime, is life changing – but not for the better.
These considerations apply to alcohol consumption and related expenditures, too.
The average person in the United Kingdom, for instance, spends almost £50,000 (approximately $70,944) on alcohol during their lifetime, Macmillan Cancer Support found in a study.
Each Briton spends around £787 a year on alcohol, with London’s concentration of alcohol users spending considerably more. The research, conducted by Onepoll, surveyed 2,000 over-18s. Men spent an average of £934.44 per year, the data found, compared with women spending £678.60.
A 2006 study by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found excessive alcohol consumption costs the United States economy $223.5 billion annually. Each drink alone, 10 years ago, cost the user $1.90 in economic loss. At that rate, if a consumer averages just one drink a day the product cost alone reaches nearly $35,000 over 50 years.
A heavy alcohol user who averages five drinks a day could spend more than $173,000, on alcohol consumption alone, over five decades. That doesn’t include costs of associated health problems, lost work opportunities and the financial opportunity lost to alcohol-related money that was not put to constructive use.
Alcohol, tobacco expenditures – poverty can be the consequence for some
Parents who smoke are plunging nearly half a million children into poverty, according to research that The Independent reported about. Around half of the 2.3 million children living in relative poverty in the UK have a parent who smokes, the analysis by the University of Nottingham found.
However, a further 400,000 would be classified as being in poverty if their parents’ weekly expenditure on tobacco was subtracted from family income. In households where both parents are smokers, average weekly spend on smoking would be £50, the study, published in the journal BMC Public Health, estimates.
Dr Tessa Langley, at Nottingham’s UK Centre for Tobacco and Alcohol Studies, said that smoking cut income available to feed, clothe and care for children.
This study demonstrates that if our government, and our health services, prioritised treating smoking dependence, it could have a major effect on child poverty as well as health” she said.
A separate study, from the University of Edinburgh, reveals that the 2007 ban on smoking in public places led to fall in the number of children in England admitted to hospital with respiratory infections.
The biggest falls were seen in the number of chest infections, which fell by 14 per cent almost immediately. The researchers estimate that between 2007 and 2012, the measures have been responsible for preventing 11,000 admissions a year.
