Money up in smoke

Good morning dear reader,

My welcomes first to two new followers, Stretching the pennies to save the pounds and pretty vintage roses. May our journeys together be interesting, supportive and fun.

As you know, because I mention it a lot, Big Man and I were both, until recently smokers. Actually, 20 a day each, smokers. I guess that's classed as heavy smokers?

I have been smoking since I was about 16. It started at school with copying the other, naughty but therefore cooler, (or so i thought) kids in my year. My parents had had a very nasty divorce and I am an only child. I suppose it was my way of fitting in, showing I was one of them.
It was still unusual to be a child of a "broken family" as they called it then.
My father had been a domineering bully all my life and hated smoking (despite being one himself when younger) I think this was my way of putting two fingers up to him.

I continued, trying to be cool behind the bike sheds until it had taken a grip. I remember when they were a pound a packet. I used to go to the local school disco, lipgloss and my 10 Silk Cut. I was in the "in crowd" and it felt great.

My life continued, getting a job, socialising, boyfriends, holidays abroad. All the time my little friends came with me. A messy marriage and divorce of my own, they were always there, comforting me, giving me something to do when I was very low.
I knew it was bad for me, I coughed, I wheezed, I found it difficult to run. I tried the patches, hypnosis at £300 a go, twice! Sprays, fake cigarettes-they were good but too close to the real thing.
My mum begged me to stop, still I continued.

As you know, I read a lot of blogs and value what you say. I have learnt a lot from you and I started changing my life when I found these frugal bloggers. It began with SFT, saving for travel who has paid off her mortgage while still travelling to wonderful places. I then found the two Queens, Mean and Frugal.  These three ladies really got me thinking about what I do with my money. I work hard to get it, as we all do and these blogs really made me watch where it was going.

I started to begrudge spending the money on smoking, on something that was killing us. There was no point, saving, scrimping and trying to,pay off our mortgage because we probably wouldn't be around long enough to enjoy it. We knew we wanted to stop but it was always tomorrow.
£400 a month we were smoking! I used the mortgage overpayment calculator and if we paid this off our mortgage it saves us about 8 years.

About 2 days later, Mean Queen did a whole post on not smoking. I read it and watched some clips she had added. I showed it to the Big Man who did the same.
I'm not sure if it was seeing it printed or the clips or that is was within my precious blogging community but we have stopped. Cold Turkey!

I want to say a huge thank you to Ilona at Mean Queen and also to SFT who always makes time to send me supportive comments and ideas and to all of you who drop in, leave a comment or follow this blog. It keeps me strong and committed.

We save this £100 each week.

Wow.