My smoker friends, have you ever realized how much money and time you spend on this activity (smoking). You might have a rough idea about the percentage of your salary you would be spending on cigarettes per month. I tried to work out a daily average(number of cigarettes per day) a person would smoke. My data showed that the magic number was 14.75. I have calculated this based on the person’s mood or the ocassion, since the number of cigarettes consumed is directly proportional to these two factors(mainly). This statistical data might disappoint the more aggressive smokers, but nevertheless, for such people, I guess, we can increase the daily average figure by 4, i.e, 18.75.

Please see the figures for further details.

So, now let us calculate the average monthly expenditure on cigarettes per person.

The number of cigarettes an average smoker will consume per month = 442.5 wow!!!!!!

If you take the average cost of a cigarette to be Rs. 3.50/-

Then the average monthly expenses will come to around = Rs.1548.75/-

Well, so a normal smoker will smoke Rs.1550/- worth of cigarettes per month. For the more aggressive smokers, this amount might well go upto Rs.1800/-

Now, if we do our calculations for a Leap Year(366 days), the annual expenditure on cigarettes will be roughly Rs. 18,585/- for a normal smoker and Rs. 23,625/- for chain smokers. Are you surprised!!! The next section might just throw you off the ground. Please read along.

Now we will try to calculate, how many extra minutes people spend smoking or on smoking related activities as compared to the non-smokers. Since, it is safe to assume that nobody will have their cigarettes delivered at their doorsteps every morning along with the newspapers (well, this is a damn good idea), I would use the following values for calculations:

Number of trips to the Cigarette ki Dukaan(Shop)/Day = 4
Average Time spent on each trip = 30 minutes
Average Time to consume a single cigarette = 4 minutes (Not for cigars)
Average number of cigarettes per day per person = 14.75 (as calculated from above)

So, Minutes / Day = 179
Minutes / Month = 5370
Minutes / Year = 64440 (44.75 days)

We all know that time is money. Lets assume that 1 minute is equivalent to Rs. 0.50 (for NITK guys only), so the total equivalent money spent will be = Rs.32,200/-

So, when we add up the two totals, we arrive at this fact that, the normal smokers spend away about Rs 50,805/- annually more than the non-smokers.

This is quite interesting. Is Bill Gates a smoker? Mukesh Ambani (just bet Mr. Bill Gates as the richest) is surely not a smoker . I saw it on some interview of his somewhere. I googled a bit more and realized that, none of the top ten richest persons in the world are smokers. I thought, Mukesh Ambani had great management skills, but now, I dont. I am not still sure of Bill Gates though. Is he really intelligent or is he a non-smoker?????? I will try to find out.