Smokers can be motivated to quit by many things. So if your New Year's resolution to quit has failed, here are a few financial reasons to try again: � Cost of cigarettes. At $5 a pack, cigarettes cost a pack-a-day smoker $1,825 a year and more than $18,000 in a decade. � Opportunity costs. The costs become crazier if you took the opportunity to invest that money instead of watching it go up in smoke. One eye-opening calculation was done by Michael Rabinoff, a psychiatrist and author of Ending the Tobacco Holocaust: Imagine you took $2,000 a year spent on smoking from age 18 to age 65 and invested it annually in a Roth IRA that returned 11 percent per year. You would have a tax-free cash hoard of nearly $3 million. YES.....$3 MILLION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! � Collateral spending. The cost of cigarettes alone is not the only expense. Insurance is much higher for smokers - about 25 percent to 35 percent for life and health insurance. Other costs are more difficult to measure, but you can imagine spending more than nonsmokers on teeth cleaning and whitening, dry cleaning and replacing clothes and furniture marred by cigarette burns. Then there's the lower resale value of vehicles and homes because they smell of smoke, which can total thousands of dollars. There are other costs: In 1999, the CDC estimated the cost to the average smoker in the hidden expenses of health care and lost productivity totaled $7.18 per pack. "So, you're paying five to seven bucks up front for cigarettes, plus seven bucks in hidden costs for something that's going to kill you," Shiffman said. "It's not a good deal." � Instant ROI on quitting. Businesspeople always want to know the return on investment, or ROI, for money they spend. The ROI on investing in a smoking cessation program is a no-brainer. It doubles your chances of quitting, Shiffman said. An over-the-counter nicotine replacement system, whether gum, lozenges or patches, costs $4 to $5 a day. Meanwhile, many smokers easily spend more than that daily for cigarettes. So paying for treatment is cheaper than smoking. � Cost to your family. Besides the obvious harm to your family from secondhand smoke - which costs nonsmoking Americans nearly $6 billion a year, according to the American Academy of Actuaries - your family is paying for your habit in other ways. If you're a breadwinner in the family, your likelihood for premature death starts kicking in during your late 40s and early 50s, your prime income-earning years, Shiffman said. That robs your survivors of whatever income and greater inheritance they might have had if you had quit sooner. [B]My Milage:[/B] [B]My Quit Date: [/B]1/21/2007 [B]Smoke-Free Days:[/B] 125 [B]Cigarettes Not Smoked:[/B] 2,500 [B]Amount Saved:[/B] $558.75 [B]Life Gained:[/B] [B]Days:[/B] 16 [B]Hrs:[/B] 12 [B]Mins:[/B] 5 [B]Seconds:[/B] 21