This Is How Much Bad Habits Can Cost You in a Year

It’s a sad fact of life: Quite often, the better you feel doing something, the worse it is for you, especially when you repeat it so often that it falls under the category of “lifestyle choice.” Eating junk food from time to time is an indulgence, but living solely on cheeseburgers and fries is a lifestyle, and a pretty bad one.

When it comes to poor lifestyle choices, there is a tendency to think of them solely in terms of our health, and the negative impact of poor lifestyle decisions on our overall health and life expectancy can be quite grim. But there is another, more pressing issue that we often overlook: money. Every wrong lifestyle choice we make has a real direct cost that can add up to a mind blowing amount over the course of a year (or a lifetime). Without even thinking about how you’ll pay your hospital bills after a lifetime of self-indulgence, an unhealthy lifestyle will hit where it hurts: your wallet. Here’s a breakdown of what your bad lifestyle can cost you.

substances

Just because a substance is legal and regulated doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. And even the belief that something is bad for us won’t stop us from spending money on it—nearly 30 million Americans still smoke cigarettes, despite decades of research showing how bad they are. But if you want emphysema or liver failure to be your problem in the future, here’s what your drug habit is costing you:

• Nicotine: Cigarettes are damn expensive these days, $6 to $12 a pack . If you smoke one pack a day, it could cost over $4,000 a year. But that’s not all – smoking makes buying many types of insurance, including health insurance and life insurance, much more expensive . If you’re all cool and modern and vape instead, you’re still probably spending over $2,000 a year.
• Alcohol: Alcohol has also become quite expensive – you can find $20 cocktails in the wild, and you can get all sorts of liquor and wine fantasies that cost mind-blowing amounts for a single drink. Of course, if you buy 30 packs of Keystone Lite every month for only $15 , that’s only $200 a year… sitting alone at home drinking beer every night. If you go out a few times a month and buy something better, your average lifetime alcohol spend ranges from $68,000 to over $120,000 depending on where you live.
• THC: The health effects of smoking or otherwise taking THC are still being researched and discussed, but it’s still something you don’t need to put into your body. The cost of marijuana and other THC products varies greatly, but on average people spend between $600 and $700 a year on these things, which is the same as how much people spend each year on alcohol.

Fast food

Everyone likes a burrito from time to time or a slice of pizza on their way home at 2 am. But constantly eating fast food is not only unhealthy in general, but also damn expensive . Depending on who you ask, the average person spends between $2,400 and $10,000 a year on fast food , and each of these meals is almost certainly much more expensive than home-cooked food.

We often overlook the impact of the drinks we buy—all those huge sugary sodas and lattes are also pretty expensive: Americans drink 40 to 50 gallons of soda every year at an average annual cost of $350 (or $21,000 in a lifetime). ). ). And coffee is even more expensive—buying all those fancy coffee drinks will set you back over $1,000 a year .

Gamble

Many people like to bet once in a while, whether it’s the Super Bowl draw at the office, a flashy trip to Vegas, or a weekly lottery ticket. However, if your gambling is anything more than casual fun, it probably eats into your wallet because the casino always wins in the end: it is estimated that the average casino visitor loses over $600 a year, for example. and a person with a serious gambling addiction can lose up to $90,000 annually .

Lottery tickets may not seem like such a bad thing, but we still spend an average of $132 each year on lottery tickets that offer a negligible chance of any payout, let alone a return on your investment.

Lack of Exercise

Not exercising and living a sedentary lifestyle seems like something you can always change—in other words, after a youth spent on the couch, we imagine that one day in our middle years we can jump in, go to the gym, and somehow succeed. for all those years spent doing nothing. And depending on your genetic make-up, you might be able to get away with it, but those years of skipping leg day still have a real cost. How many? It is estimated that people who are sedentary spend about $1,500 a year more in health-related expenses than people who regularly go outside and sweat.

Have not had enough sleep

The dream is strange, right? Here we are, mortals, with limited time on this planet, and we are more or less obligated to spend about a third of our lives unconscious. As frustrating as it may be at times, sleep is wonderful, and those who refuse it pay a heavy price in their health and well-being.

And their budget — because people who sleep more are more successful in their profession and end up making more money. Studies have shown an association between an extra hour of sleep each night and an increase in earnings of about 5% if the change is consistent. This means that if you miss those extra hours of sleep, you will, in effect, pay a financial penalty.