Easy Money, Avoid “Sin Taxes”
In the spirit of Tax season I was thinking about all the various taxes we pay and was kind of wondering if there was any way for me to avoid some of these taxes without having to worry about some governmental agency showing up at my door one day.
The only taxes that I feel I could easily avoid and not alter my life all that much would be to avoid the “sin taxes”. More elegant writers than I have sold a lot of books on principles less complicated than this. If you are looking for a catchy phrase for your next book think Avoid the Sin taxes.
It is an easy to follow, healthy, effective way to save money. The 3 items most commonly considered under “sin taxes” are smoking, drinking and gambling. Some people might start to lump gasoline in there soon with all the talk of global warming.
After a little research I learned that they are a remnant of Puritan New England when sumtary laws were used in an attempt to control sin. They covered many things including the regulation of extravagance in food, dress, tobacco and drink.
The actual benefit of “Sin Taxes” to society has been debated but for an individual you could save a fair bit of change by avoiding them.
- In the short term by avoiding products that fall under sin taxes you would eliminate some very expensive habits from your life. The obvious example is smoking. It has been stated before but it bears repeating that at $4/pack a pack a day habit costs about $1465 a year. Plug that number into one of those retirement calculators, and it is a very large number.
- most of these habits tend to have negative effects on our overall health. Keeping with the smoking example, if you smoke for 30+ years and then you get lung cancer at 68. The first year costs of treatment is at least $36,000 on the low end. Hopefully you will have insurance but if not, getting sick is a good way to wipe out your savings.
People could argue that gambling isn’t all that bad until it becomes a problem. I know that for a large number of individuals gambling is the the same as going to a football game or the theater with the added benefit that every once in a while it might cost you nothing.
These sin taxes along with “mental lapse” costs can be pretty significant. Between parking tickets(if you pay them), speeding tickets, late fees, ATM fees, etc… we probably spent over $1000 in 2006 for these “mental lapses”
Our goal this year is to eliminate these completely. I have a feeling it will be harder than we think.
