A nicotine habit is expensive in a way that hides itself. It never leaves in one payment. It leaves in fifteen-dollar pieces, at a petrol station, on a card you do not reconcile — which is exactly why almost nobody quitting can tell you their annual figure within a few hundred dollars.

Disposables

A disposable runs $10 to $26 depending on the brand and the state — Elf Bar around $15 to $22, Geek Bar around $12 to $26.

Two a week at $16 is $1,664 a year. That is the modest case. A habit at one every two or three days clears $75 a month without feeling like a decision was ever made.

Pods

JUUL four-packs run $15 to $22. A pod-a-day habit lands around $150 to $183 a month — roughly $1,800 to $2,200 a year.

Put next to a car payment, that is the same order of money. Nobody signs a car loan without reading the figure; almost everybody signs this one without ever seeing it.

Pouches

Zyn's list price is $5.64 a can of fifteen; shelf prices run $3.49 to $6 before tax. A can-a-day habit is roughly $105 to $170 a month.

Tax is where it gets steep. In Illinois a can lands near $9.92 after tax, which pushes a daily habit past $3,500 a year — for a product that fits in a coat pocket and that most people around you do not know you use.

The figure climbs while you stand still

Two forces push it up without any change in behaviour. Nicotine taxes are rising across states, and tolerance moves in one direction — people go up in strength or up in count, essentially never down. The habit you priced two years ago is not the habit you are paying for now.

There is a calculator on this site that will do the year and the five-year total with your own numbers. It runs in your browser, it asks for nothing, and it sends nothing anywhere.

Why the number belongs on the same screen as the days

Days clean is an abstraction on day four. Money kept is not. It is a figure that goes up while you do nothing, which is the rarest possible property in a quit — everything else asks for effort, and this one accrues in your favour while you sit there feeling terrible.

That is why Exhale prints the two together and nothing else beside them. Not to make you feel good about a purchase you did not make, but because on the days when the count means nothing to you, the money still does.