Make your mortgage go up in smoke
With the ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces and workplaces coming into force in England on July 1, now might be a good time to stub out the habit once and for all.
It could save your finances as well as your health – and not just because cigarettes went up 11p a packet in the last Budget.
Smokers often don’t realise how much their habit costs them.
Independent financial adviser Jason Hemmings points out: “For someone on the average wage smoking 20 a day, 15 per cent of their disposable income is being spent on their habit.”
Giving up would leave them around £2,000 a year better off, while an individual or household getting through two packs a day could be £4,000 richer.
Over 25 years, that’s £100,000 – enough to pay off the bulk of the typical mortgage.
And if you use that cash to make regular, or even occasional, overpayments, you could be mortgage free years early, saving thousands of pounds in interest in the process.
