I'm always ogling gear, but I'm sticking to what I have for now. It works for me and it will last. I really love my current setup because it is simple and easy to maintain for a long time. The tinkerer in me wants a mod and a few RBAs, but I've come to realize that I don't need all of that to have a satisfying vape day after day.
I've got two Volt X2 batteries, so that's $50 right there. I also got a 900mah spinner for $30. Those should last me for several months before I will need to replace them.
Initially, I bought 10 cartomizers for $16, but I'm not using cartomizers anymore, so that'll be all that I spend on those in the foreseeable future. I got three T3 clearomizer tanks, which adds $21 to my expenses. I stupidly bought 5 spare heads that I will never get through to make for another $15. I say that I will never get through them because I have long since learned to re-wick and coil them with 32 gauge kanthal wire and 100% cotton cheesecloth, so I can use the heads I already have opened virtually indefinitely. I spent around $10 to get enough wire and wicking material to rebuild the heads I have at least 100 times. I already had a suitable multimeter for testing resistance, so that's covered.
I bought $30 worth of juice before realizing it was going to get expensive quickly, at which point I switched to mixing my own menthol juice. In total, I spent around $45 on enough supplies/materials to mix up at least 250ml of it at 12mg/ml (that's a very rough and conservative approximation) and I do love menthol enough to vape it all of the time if I have to. I already have glass vials/bottles and glass dropper lids for reusable storage/dispensing. I also have a $20 liter of everclear, which I tend to dilute and use for cleaning.
So all in all, I've spent around $235 on gear and supplies. I have been vaping since early February. When I smoked, I went through a $65 carton every 9 days on average, so that's a monthly expense of around $200 right there. And that's not counting the single packs I would buy when I wanted something different or ran out while I was out of the house. I'm also not factoring in the discounts I got on everything that I've bought, which range to anywhere from 5% to 15%.
Assuming I've considered everything I've bought so far and I've done my math right, I broke even a week or two ago. And now that my spending on expendables has dropped to $0, the savings will only continue to increase. By the time my batteries quit on me, I'll have saved enough money by not buying cartons to double up on batteries or buy an entry level APV and still be in the black.
