Lazy Man and Money

The Hidden Costs of Smoking

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Although many people realize that smoking is bad for your health, few realize just how big of an impact it can have on your wallet. If you are finding it difficult to quit smoking the following information may just change your mind. This may also be the reason why people are making the switch to vaping (Go to www.davincivaporizer.com to check it out) with those handheld vaporizers because of the savings you can get. Let’s take a look at just how expensive smoking can be:

  • The actual cost of cigarettes – Thanks to cigarette taxes and the higher prices of tobacco, cigarettes are more expensive than ever. If you are on a budget this can easily eat away at your monthly expenses. Even if you are purchasing budget cigarettes, the price is still quite high. When you figure that the average pack costs at least three dollars you can easily spend more than $90 a month if you smoke a pack a day.
  • The cost of smoking has on your health insurance – Whether or not you are currently covered by a health insurance policy you may not realize you are actually paying more for the privilege of being a smoker. Health insurance companies charge an additional percentage for smokers and depending on how high your premium is this can add up very quickly. In fact you can end up spending an extra $200 a month just because you smoke.
  • The toll smoking takes on your daily life – If you’ve been smoking for several years, chances are, you may find it difficult to take part in many daily activities. Whether it’s chasing your kids around, or a long trek to the parking lot, after time the damage the smoking does to your lungs can make these activities nearly impossible. You may find yourself avoiding these activities and as such avoiding much of life.
  • The cost of smoking related health problems – Perhaps the most obvious cost of smoking is the money that you will pay to repair the damage you’ve inflicted on yourself. Whether it’s continuous respiratory infections caused by irritated lung passages, or even cancer, the costs for these health procedures are immense. When you add this to the amount of money you’re already paying in increased health insurance premiums it is clear that smoking can be incredibly expensive.
  • The cost to quit smoking – The smoking cessation industry brings in millions of dollars every year. It is big business to try to help people kick this habit that can be very difficult to break. Whether you are paying for prescription medication to help you stop smoking, or you are trying natural methods such as hypnotism, these all can be expensive.

These are just a few examples of how smoking can impact not only your health but also your wallet. Even know many of us do understand that smoking is harmful, it can be difficult to put that pack away. While quitting smoking can be costly as illustrated above, when you compare it to the other expenses you may be facing in the future, it can be considered a very solid investment. Quitting smoking is not easy but perhaps this information about just how much it can cost you will help you find the motivation to kick the habit.

For more health tips that may save your life as well as your wallet, visit Lazy Man and Health.

Should You Put a Price on Your Health?

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Should You Put a Price on Health?
Should You Put a Price on Health?

A few readers responded to my recent post Is Eating Organic Food Worth the Money? by saying that you can’t put a price on your health. I’ve seen a similar argument come up time and time again in my MonaVie article (For those who don’t know, MonaVie is a juice that people have suggested may give great health benefits – at a price of $32-$40 a bottle – which they get a cut of). It sounds like a pretty straight-forward argument. Shouldn’t our most primary goal be self preservation – to keep breathing, keep healthy? I’m not so sure… and I have spent 18 months writing Lazy Man and Health. I think that as usual, the devil is in the details.

What is healthy?

That is a loaded question. You ask 20 people you’ll probably get 20 different answers. In general many of us know the “eat right and exercise” routine. It’s a good start, and I think if more Americans followed that along with “stop smoking”, we’d see our collective health get a whole lot better. It is my opinion (and perhaps your doctor’s) that unless you are doing things, it doesn’t really make sense to look into other things. You can still eat right without necessarily eating organic. You can still exercise even if you don’t belong to a gym. Oh and don’t forget to take care of your teeth, reducing plaque in your mouth can help your heart.

Money can buy you good health

If you have an extreme amount of money, you can buy yourself a good measure of health. My wife has admitted to looking at Gwen Stefani in the past and thought, “Wow is she in shape!” I’ve looked at Brad Pitt’s six pack and thought the same thing. However, I’m quick to point out that it’s part of their job to look that way. They can pay for a personal trainer, nutritionalist, personal chef, and Jamba Lights with Whey Protein Boosts at Jamba Juice. I think the average person has to really think if they can afford these things. It is my opinion that many can not (with the exception of the Jamba Juice, but that has it’s own Latte Factor).

In addition to the above there are a whole host of things that you could do with a big enough budget. One could buy an water ionizer. Some professional sports players have hyperbaric medicine chambers in their home. Perhaps that could help one’s health. There are probably about another 100 things mentioned in Ray Kurzweil’s Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever. A successful inventor like Ray Kurzweil can afford the pile treatments and tests he mentions.

Is there a limit to how healthy I can be?

Perhaps they are even subject to the law of dimishining returns. For instance, as I’ve been working to do 100 pushups, I’ve found that I made great gains in the beginning, but gains have gotten harder to come by. I’d be exstatic if I could run a 6-minute mile. However, I would have no desire to put in the incredible amount of exra work to run a 5-minute mile (if it’s even possible for my body physically).

Medical Bills: The Leading Cause of Bankruptcy

It may surprise you, but medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy from this Harvard Study. I see two paths you can go with this. You can spend your money trying to prevent everything that might physically happen to you. Or you can take reasonable preventative measures and continue to grow your money for the day that you might need it. If you go with the 100% prevention plan, you better hope you’ve got all your bases 100% covered. If something heriditary slips in that you couldn’t prevent, you probably won’t have the funds to get by it. If you take the more balance approached, you might prevent all but a few maladies, but still have the money for treatment later down the line. I can’t say what’s right for you, but I will choose the balanced approach, that leaves money for treatment down the line.

Measuring Cost-Benefit

Like any purchase decision, I think you have to run a little cost-benefit analysis. If I’m already eating lots of good fruit, am I going to get value by spending $5,600 a year for a family of four to drink MonaVie? However, if a doctor says that a enteric-coated baby aspirin can prevent me from getting a heart-attack or a stroke, that’s something I’m going to pick up immediately.

I’ve put a price on my health and it’s very high. Part of that price is investing and amassing enough wealth for treatment tomorrow as it is for today.

Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk

Is Eating Organic Food Worth the Money?

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Eating organic food may cost a little more

If you’ve decided to give organic food a try, the first thing you may notice is the high price tag. Even though it’s better for you, the fact is, eating organic can put a serious dent in your wallet. Is it worth the cost? Let’s take a logical look at organic food and see what it has to offer.

Why Organic Food Costs More

  • Organic Food Doesn’t Scale – The producer is usually not a nameless, faceless conglomerate with money to burn. The average organic farmer or rancher is a mom and pop organization and they just don’t have the buying power available or the ability to set low prices like their competitors. Lastly, since they don’t have the purchasing power of a big company, the food packaging costs is going to be more expensive.
  • Organic farming is Expensive – The fields used have to be certified organic and this land usually costs more. Most organic foods are not laden with cheap pesticides that endanger the population, and farmers have to spend more getting rid of pests and weeds with alternative solutions.

    • All of this adds up into higher costs for you, the consumer. While some organic food labels just charge more because they know people will pay for it, the average producer is simply trying to stay in business. But is all of this extra money really worth it? First and foremost, you are paying for food that may be safer to eat. Some say you can’t really put a price on avoiding ingesting harmful chemicals. However, what if the money saved allows you to get a specialist doctor or lifesaving surgery later in life?

    Many fertilizers and pesticides used in regular food have been found to cause cancer. If you look at the money you would spend treating cancer, suddenly, organic food that is treated with safer pesticides and herbicides doesn’t seem so expensive. Another example would be organic milk. I was watching 30 Days and the dairy farms they showed operated under conditions that turned my stomach. Cows stood in filth, the equipment can be dirty and often, packaging is not as sanitary as it could be.

    Compare this with a free range organic dairy where cows are not forced to stand in small pens in their own filth. You won’t be drinking that and you’ll likely be happier knowing that the milk was harvested in a more humane manner. This is also true of organic meats where conditions for the animals are usually much better.

    The bottom line is that organic food is generally healthier for you to eat. Can put a price on your health? Sure, you may be spending more right now, but you are also facing a lot less risk for developing chemical related illnesses down the road. When it comes to genetically modified foods that may not be entirely safe to eat, you can rest assured that your organic farmer is not using these potential harmful seeds or production methods. Organic food may not be perfect, but to the millions that buy it, it is well worth the cost.

    Make the Most of your Organic Food Budget

    I should mention that not all organic foods are the same. There are some fruits and vegetables that are more resistant to pesticides. One way to think about whether a fruit is susceptible, is to look at the skin. Fruits like apples have thin skin and people generally eat it. It doesn’t give you much protection from pesticides. However, avocados have a think shell-like skin that I don’t think people eat (maybe a few of you do). So you don’t have to guess, Foodnews.org has a list of susceptible foods. One might consider not using their money on organic avocados and instead putting the money on buying organic apples.

    Sound off in the comments. Do you think that organic food is worth the cost?

    On a Diet? Watch Your Wallet.

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    Over at Lazy Man and Health, I wrote an article that should be of interest to Lazy Man and Money readers. Science Daily has a report about how being on a diet can affect your money.

    This should be of interest to a few of my favorite financial bloggers who occasionally write about health. A short list of these would be:

    How to Live Forever

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    That’s what Ray Kurzweil and Dr. Terry Grossman try to teach in Fantastic Voyage. While I was in Hawaii, I polished off 14 of the most dense chapters I could ever imagine. Since I’ve read about 3 books in the last 10 years or so, it’s a huge step for me. I tend to read short articles because I feel that I can get 80% of the information in 20% of the time.

    It was quite amazing to read about all the ways Americans (well just about everyone) are slowly killing ourselves. Granted, while reading this book, I couldn’t help think that it was impossible for the average person to follow the guidelines. Nonetheless, Ray and Terry (as they tend to call themselves – see Ray and Terry), give a number of ways that people can alter their daily lives to enable them to be healthy. The idea is that by maintaining good health for the next 20 years or so, science’s progress will be able to step in and slow, stop, or even reverse aging. It sounds more than a little far-fetched, but they back up each recommendation with citations to the research that backs it up. I wasn’t about to check out all the references on vacation, but I’ll make the assumption that if their research was off, it would have been brought to light.

    From a financial perspective, most of the recommendations are going to cost you. And since time is money, it’s going to cost you from that perspective as well. Then again, as Walter Updegrave shows, maintaining your health has quite a few financial rewards as well.