You can save an incredible amount of money by switching from cigarettes to e-cigarettes. In fact, this is one of the top reasons why people consider e-smoking to begin with; the price of cigarettes is astronomical in some areas, and e-smoking becomes extremely tempting when a smoker discovers how little e-cigarettes cost. With an average cigarette price of over $6.00 per pack in the United States, the relatively low e-cigarette cost can be recouped during your first week of e-smoking. Not sure which e-cigarette you’d like to try first? Take a look at my article about the best e-cigarette for beginners!

E-Cigarette Cost: Starter Kit

Let’s start with a popular middle-of-the-road e-cigarette, the V2 Pro Series 3. This kit costs a modest $59.99, and it includes a an e-cigarette with a built-in battery, a breakaway USB charger and a refillable e-liquid cartridge. You can easily use the same cartridge for a full month, so including e-liquid costs you can easily expect your first month of e-smoking to cost significantly less than a month of cigarette smoking.

E-Cigarette Cost: Long-Term

What about the long-term cost benefits of e-cigarettes? After you’ve invested in your first starter kit, the low e-cigarette cost really starts to become evident. Let’s suppose that you buy two 30 ml bottles of e-liquid from a company such as Halo each month. With shipping, you’ll pay around $43 per month and you’ll probably even have some e-liquid left over. Let’s also suppose that you buy a new tank atomizer and pack of empty tanks each month at a cost of around $20 with shipping. So, your total e-cigarette cost is $63 monthly. If you smoked a pack of cigarettes each day in the same time period, you would have spent $180 at the current average price of cigarettes. In a year, e-smoking would cost about $516, while cigarettes would cost an average of $2,160. That’s a savings of $1,644!

The savings continue to mount if you live in one of the 24 United States and territories with an average cigarette tax of more than $1.46 per pack. For example, suppose you live in New York, which has an average cigarette cost of approximately $10 per pack when you purchase by the carton. Here, the savings provided by the much lower e-cigarette cost become truly astronomical. While e-smoking costs the same $516 per year, a pack of cigarettes each day would have cost $3,650. Switching to e-cigarettes would result in a cost savings of $3,134 per year. Imagine what that could do for your savings and investments, your entertainment budget, your health care — whatever is important to you.

According to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, the five states with the highest per-pack taxes on cigarettes are New York ($4.35), Rhode Island ($3.46), Connecticut ($3.40), Hawaii ($3.20) and Washington ($3.025) at the time of writing.