well, I just started smoking.
In all seriousness, please do explain why you would do this, especially ciggarettes? There is very little evidence that the occasional cigar or pipe does that much harm (though I don't indulge in them myself). But habitual ciggarette smoking is well-documented to cause huge physical harm to your body leading to horrible, wasting illnesses. The verdict is pretty much in on ciggarettes. It's a pretty clear conclusion.
I, myself, have not special desire to live a long life. I've always told God, "I'm ready to go whenever you're ready for me." But, I do have one overwhelming prayer, "God, please, please, when you are ready, do it quickly." I just don't want to spend the last decade of my life in a nursing home, in a wheelchair, schleping an oxygen bottle around just sort of slowly dying a few cells at time, waking each morning to the certainty that tomorrow will be just slightly worse than today. But that is the death of lung cancer and emphysema and heart disease. Why, in God's name I ask, would you conciously choose that?
And then there's the cost of it. It's approaching four dollars a pack. If you can stay to a half-pack a day, that's still thirty dollars a month. If you're 35 right now and you were to put that $30 per month into an investment at 7.5%, you'd retire with $40,000 more. And that's assuming that the price of cigarettes doesn't change one cent over those thirty years. Forecasting even just 3% inflation on those cigs pushes you to about $70,000 more for your retirement. If you just forget this silly idea about smoking, you can expect to retire a year earlier... and healthy enough to enjoy it.
So, I really do hope that you'll answer this question of why? I just can't understand it and I honestly hope you'll show me what I'm missing.
