Cut Out The Crap And Profit!

As you know, I’m always on the look out for opportunities to earn some extra money, so it came as quite a surprise to learn jut how much extra I could already have just by doing nothing. If that sounds like an odd statement, let me explain:

I recently quit cigarette smoking and cut down on my alcohol consumption. The cigarettes were an old and out of date habit that was not only a health hazard to me and the people around me, but also burning a large hole in my pocket. And the alcohol had gone from social drinking perhaps one or two nights a week, to at least a bottle of wine in front of the TV every night (that was when I wasn’t out drinking elsewhere!).

Now I’m not writing this to lecture about the health benefits of giving up smoking and restricting alcohol intake, but purely as a financial exercise. So if you are a smoker and a drinker then don’t take this the wrong way. But, like me, you might be quite surprised to learn just how much money can be spent fulfilling these ingrained habits – money which is easy to overlook.

To see how much profit it is possible to make by looking at existing habits and cutting down, it is necessary to examine how much it costs:

• The current price for a packet of 20 cigarettes in the UK is about £4.50 – so with a habit of 20 a day, it would cost £31.50 per week or approximately £136.50 per month.
  
• The cost of the wine varies depending on how much it costs for a bottle, but taking £3.50 as a ball park figure for a bottle of cheap supermarket plonk, then this amounts to £24.50 per week or more than £106 per month.
  
• Add the two monthly figures together and we get a whopping £242.50!

Now I don’t know about you, but £242 per month extra money sounds like a pretty substantial sum to me, and certainly not one to be sniffed at. But I’m not advocating denying oneself any pleasure altogether – after all, what is money for if we can’t use it to enjoy ourselves from time to time?

Anyway, that’s enough of my rambling for today. Simply put:

Sometimes there is money to be had simply by doing nothing…