Addicted to caffeine? Cigarettes? Have trouble walking away from the bad-food buffet? Can't stop playing the lottery? You may be gambling with your financial future. [via]
Playing the lottery Costs over lifetime: $31,750 Studies show that the heaviest lottery players -- the 20% who contribute 82% of lottery revenue -- disproportionately are low-income, minority men who have less than a college education. A recent study published in the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty found that those earning an annual $13,000 or less spend a whopping 9% (about $1,100) of their income on the lottery tickets. Why? Because poor people see playing the lottery as their "best chance" for improving their financial situation, according to a recent Carnegie Mellon study. Truth is, your chances of striking it big are a slim one in 195 million! To calculate your odds, click here.
Caffeine addiction Costs over lifetime: $113,000 While up to 80% of us use caffeine in one form or another, more often than not, it comes from coffee (More than 400 billion cups of coffee are consumed every year, making it the world's most popular beverage), and sodas (one out of every four things we drink is, in fact, a soda). Harmful health effects aside, this addiction wreaks havoc on the wallet. Consider this: if you buy a cup of coffee every day at $1.75 a cup, you're spending more than $600 a year to fuel your habit; make your coffee at home for just .55 and you'll save more than $400.
Smoking Costs over lifetime: $86,000 (for a 24-year old woman over a lifetime); $183,000 (for a 24-year old man over a lifetime) Let's break this down further: if you have a pack-a-day habit, you're blowing more than $4,000 a year (New Yorkers pay $11 or more for a pack of cigarettes). Smoking not only takes 8-10 years off your life, but it also significantly increases your insurance costs -- from your life insurance (expect to pay about three times as much as a non-smoker) to your homeowners (non-smokers typically get a 10% discount on their premiums), auto insurance (non smokers generally get a 5% discount), to your health insurance. Run the numbers on ehealthinsurance.com and you'll see: smokers pay several hundred dollars more per year than non-smokers.
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