Dollar-A-Day Group

[AndriaD]

I seem to be mainly buying DIY stuff nowadays. Just ordered some flavors, and hey they're already in ATL, but I won't get them till Tues because of that stupid holiday.

Someone recently put me on to VapersTek "throat hit" nicotine, which is only $10 for 120ml, instead of WizLabs' $15.99, so I'm definitely going to get some of that -- but I gotta get some more 30ml bottles first.

And I'm still buying that Blueberry Muffin from sweet-vapes, but since I now have a couple of DIYs I really like, I can make 15ml of that blueberry muffin last a month, which is better than a half-month pay period! Still buying WTA, but I started my gradual reduction at the first of the year; no ill effects from dropping from 10% to 9%, so I'll go ahead to 8% for Feb. I do still need to buy some from wholecig, though I supplement it with wta from mothersmilkwta; the MM is very smoky-tasting, which is awesome for my Smoky Cappucino DIY, but not so hot for my Strawberries and Cream and Blueberry Muffin. The MM WTA is much cheaper, so for the 9% I'm using now, I've been doing 6% of it as wholecig, 3% as MM WTA, so the smoky taste doesn't overwhelm the sweeter vapes. It saves a little.

Andria

 

[CMD-Ky]

I use unflavored VG at 10 mg and another with a touch of caramel flavor [preferably the kind with diacetyl] for variety. Cheap, no vapors tongue, 250 ml in those plastic "catchup" bottles that Walmart sells.

 

[corn flakes]

A great thread and a brilliant idea. I am new to vaping and don't consider it a hobby but a tool to quit smoking.

I have spent the last hour reading the entire thread.

So how much do you have to spend in order to get to the $1.00 a day?

I just did some quick math on my costs.

My smoke free days have cost on average $64.00. Only five days.

My smoking reduced days have cost $6.04 + $4.00 on cigs.

Seeing as my budget is 87.00 a week i do seem to be ahead

 

[CMD-Ky]

If you have found the stuff that you like then get off this forum! You will save money by not reading about all of the wonderful new products available or why and how what you use could be greatly improved. We, here, will advise you how to spend your money and lead you right into the bankruptcy court.

PS: I love your question, "So how much do you have to spend in order to get to the $1.00 a day?"

A great thread and a brilliant idea. I am new to vaping and don't consider it a hobby but a tool to quit smoking.

I have spent the last hour reading the entire thread.

So how much do you have to spend in order to get to the $1.00 a day?

I just did some quick math on my costs.

My smoke free days have cost on average $64.00. Only five days.

My smoking reduced days have cost $6.04 + $4.00 on cigs.

Seeing as my budget is 87.00 a week i do seem to be ahead

 

[3mg Meniere]

I have not thought about how much I spent in order to get to the point that I could be comfortable on a $1 a day budget. I'm scared to calculate it, so, I won't. For the first six months (with the help of these forums), like corn flakes, the best advice is to keep it restricted to the amount you spent on cigs.

THEN, when you have found satisfaction, a dollar a day is doable. With all the reviews available, and information about sales and vendors like FT, you avoid wasting money on high price items and/or items that don't work for you. And, of course, you can also get advice on avoiding a return to smoking.

 

[szot]

By careful online shopping via extensive reading here initially, then experience and trial and error, I spend less than $6 a month, so less than 20 cents a day..buy your juice and hardware from the right places and its very inexpensive..and that 20 cents per day began my very first month of vaping ( after smoking 2 packs a day of analogs for many years) plus startup costs of $30...and the initial start costs were/are minimal as well and less than $30, including spare batteries, tanks, chargers, lanyards, traveling bottles, a carrying case, as well as juice...so my first initial month was $1.20 a day, which INCLUDED ALL startup costs, and ONLY 20 cents a day ever since for batteries, juice, tanks and upkeeps of hardware....the only thing that change over 2 years and my initial start to vaping was my nicotine intake from 24-18-12-6-3-0mg now, and the $20 savings daily ($10 a pack for analogs) which added $600 a month into my pocket..

suggestion.. buy much/most all hardware directly from China and ALL juice in the USA...great online shopping sites in both countries..

 

[3mg Meniere]

I bought my first cigalikes at smoke shops. I started with 808's. I didn't find this place until about a month in. Was using six cigalikes in order to have one fully charged at a time. When I got here, I then had to make the transition. Luckily I found someone IRL who was willing to buy my 808 stuff. Then I was buying juice. I started recoiling, and making my own juice. I switched from egos to vamos, and had to learn about how to take care of one. Experimented a while with cartotanks, but the cartos just didn't last long enough to make them worthwhile. I switched recently from clearos to Orchid RTA's single coiled. Now, if I had to do it all over again, I know what I should have done. And telling others about my mistakes helps prevent them from making mistakes. Szot, you did it right from the first, and later, when the technology was better.

 

[AndriaD]

I dunno if I'm at a dollar a day YET, after a year of vaping, but I'm not really worried about it -- I take 'dollar a day' as a metaphor for "a whole lot cheaper than smoking."

One thing to consider is that the hardware for vaping doesn't go up in a puff of smoke, as all cigarettes do. How are you going to amortize the cost of the hardware, when you have no idea how long it will last? It's impossible. The best thing to do is get enough hardware that you ALWAYS have a backup, because catastrophes do happen and hardware is fallible; learn what flavors you really like, gather all the paraphernalia you'll need to go about making your own ejuice -- and that is not a small amount -- and then start learning to make your own ejuice -- that's the single biggest way to save money in vaping; the ejuice you buy for $.30-$.90 per ml (or even more!), you can make for PENNIES per ml, but it's not an easy or simple matter -- just like cooking, it takes practice and experience to be really good at it, to know which flavors from which brand you prefer, etc.

And yeah, stay out of the hardware threads around here, because they're black holes for your money. You only need to keep buying more and more this that and the other things if a) you're not really satisfied with what you have, or b) you're still building up your 'anti-catastrophe' bulwark to keep from going back to smoking -- there should be enough hardware available to you at all times that vaping is always easier than smoking.

The other thing is just plain common sense -- which seems in as short supply around ECF as everywhere else -- you pay the bills and buy the food BEFORE you buy the vape stuff, which provides a perfect barrier against over-spending -- you can't spend what you don't have. If you're spending your mortgage/rent and/or food budget on vape stuff, then the problem is not the vaping, the problem is in how you allocate funds, way beyond the sphere of this forum. I know that I used to spend $88 on cigarettes from each pay period, of which there are 2 each month. So now when I make a budget for each pay period, I allocate something like $25-ish right along with the bills; that's mainly for ejuice, cartos, etc, the essentials. When the bills are paid and the food is bought, then I see what I have left, and how much more I *might* spend on vape stuff; sometimes it's zero, sometimes maybe a little more, sometimes a lot more.

But for probably the first 6-12 months of vaping, expecting it to cost only $1 per day is asking a bit much -- it's an investment, in time, trial and error, and money. Nothing in life is free, and you get what you pay for -- if you're careful, you can avoid paying too much, but expecting that to be a simple matter of walking into a store and out again with some hardware, isn't going to happen; without careful research, you're going to spend too much.

Andria

 

[JimmyDB]

Ok... since we have dived a bit into this subject... here is an example of what I do to curb my vape spending.

I picked up one of those pre-paid credit cards... the ones you can refill online etc. In this case, I have designated an amount of money to be direct deposited into that card account from my pay each period.

This helps in a few ways... FWIW: There are no fees since I direct deposit money in
1) I have a firmer budget since I can't spend more than what is on that card... (without using a different funding source)
2) The card is isolated from any other account, so less worry about shady vendors etc.
3) I only use this card for vape supplies, so keeping track of related expenses is pretty easy.

 

[tj99959]

The biggest and most common mistake is buying product after product searching for that perfect vape instead of learning how to get that perfect vape from the products you already have.

 

[3mg Meniere]

February is coming up. What are your plans, or are you going to just hope that you don't need to replace anything?

http://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/fo...33-february-almost-upon-us.html#gmessage41330

 

[AndriaD]

I'm about to buy a Magma clone, the amgaM by tobeco, from eciggity, for $18.99. This strawberry DIY I'm vaping just gunks too badly to keep using it in a kayfun; I have to drain the tank, rewick/dry-burn, twice a day, to keep from wasting juice that gets darkened in the tank. Figure this juice is worth it; it's the first DIY I've done that is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING.

Phasing out using the cartotank so much; just tired of the constant carto replacement; the consumables are where anything like this will really eat up money, if you're not careful. Using my kayfuns is more economical, even if I do vape slightly more ejuice; since I'm DIYing about 98% of all I vape, that's not a problem.

Got some longer-range plans for nicotine, and another mod at some point; not sure what, but I'm still lusting for the Galileo mech, at MadVapes. Gotta start getting more serious in my vapocalypse prep, mechanical mods and rebuildables.

Andria

 

[Ryedan]

The biggest and most common mistake is buying product after product searching for that perfect vape instead of learning how to get that perfect vape from the products you already have.

IMO, this is huge in managing vape costs (and in other parts of our lives). A few years ago you had to be careful to buy vape supplies that could be made to perform at least adequately. Now, it's easy to find that, so much less research is required, but people can and do still fall into the trap of trying to buy satisfaction instead of learning how to make it with what they already have.

 

[corn flakes]

I dunno if I'm at a dollar a day YET, after a year of vaping, but I'm not really worried about it -- I take 'dollar a day' as a metaphor for "a whole lot cheaper than smoking."

One thing to consider is that the hardware for vaping doesn't go up in a puff of smoke, as all cigarettes do. How are you going to amortize the cost of the hardware, when you have no idea how long it will last? It's impossible. The best thing to do is get enough hardware that you ALWAYS have a backup, because catastrophes do happen and hardware is fallible; learn what flavors you really like, gather all the paraphernalia you'll need to go about making your own ejuice -- and that is not a small amount -- and then start learning to make your own ejuice -- that's the single biggest way to save money in vaping; the ejuice you buy for $.30-$.90 per ml (or even more!), you can make for PENNIES per ml, but it's not an easy or simple matter -- just like cooking, it takes practice and experience to be really good at it, to know which flavors from which brand you prefer, etc.

And yeah, stay out of the hardware threads around here, because they're black holes for your money. You only need to keep buying more and more this that and the other things if a) you're not really satisfied with what you have, or b) you're still building up your 'anti-catastrophe' bulwark to keep from going back to smoking -- there should be enough hardware available to you at all times that vaping is always easier than smoking.

The other thing is just plain common sense -- which seems in as short supply around ECF as everywhere else -- you pay the bills and buy the food BEFORE you buy the vape stuff, which provides a perfect barrier against over-spending -- you can't spend what you don't have. If you're spending your mortgage/rent and/or food budget on vape stuff, then the problem is not the vaping, the problem is in how you allocate funds, way beyond the sphere of this forum. I know that I used to spend $88 on cigarettes from each pay period, of which there are 2 each month. So now when I make a budget for each pay period, I allocate something like $25-ish right along with the bills; that's mainly for ejuice, cartos, etc, the essentials. When the bills are paid and the food is bought, then I see what I have left, and how much more I *might* spend on vape stuff; sometimes it's zero, sometimes maybe a little more, sometimes a lot more.

But for probably the first 6-12 months of vaping, expecting it to cost only $1 per day is asking a bit much -- it's an investment, in time, trial and error, and money. Nothing in life is free, and you get what you pay for -- if you're careful, you can avoid paying too much, but expecting that to be a simple matter of walking into a store and out again with some hardware, isn't going to happen; without careful research, you're going to spend too much.

Andria

I would say this is some of the best advice I have read on the boards.

My goddaughter set me up with some stuff originally. I started with one kanger evod and tank, one spare coil. A used tank and battery where the tank never made the trip home. She was showing me how it works and how to clean it and it never made it back into the box. A charger and some juice she didn't like.

Since I started I reduced to about five a day and then started panic buying. Had a problem with one of the batteries, looked online and really couldn't make sense of much. Saw something that looked right online at a local B&M and went and bought it. It turns out that it was not the same as what I have or what they advertised, just slightly different so the parts were not interchangeable and really ...... me off. Last time I go to that store.

By this point I am on my last coil so having learned a little bit find some authentic parts and order them up online. Another panic buy. To solve that I picked some wick and wire in a sample pack after researching online so I would not have that problem again.

About at this point I found these boards and learned a lot more. Advice on equipment and juice. I found a site on this side of the border that had reasonable payment and shipping terms and ordered a couple of bottles of 24mg juice. It worked smoke free. Next problem, By the time I figure out it is working I need more. Shipping took five day on the first batch so I placed an order then figured out I would not make it here before I ran out. Panic buy. Ordered up some juice from a place recommended on here and had it it two days.

And that leads up to today. My first goal is to be smoke free and seem to be progressing on that. A dollar a day will be easy for me once I have the inventory that I feel comfortable with. If I want to see clouds I will climb a mountain.

 

[misswish1]

I have shopped at Fasttech for my clearo's, did get a few little atties for juice testing. What I really need to find are some beginner mechs. Small ones for small hands, easy to use and care for, since I do all the maintaining for hubby & myself. Vacopolype stashing stuff. Have all the nic we will ever need. All the other stuff will always be available, I think. Thanks for all the money saving ideas posted here! It is fun to share the ideas and suggestions.

 

[3mg Meniere]

I ordered https://www.fasttech.com/p/1449701 the other day, my first one. It is not as fat as it looks-- that picture is in the shortest mode. It is a telescoping, which is best for 18650 + kick. It is 22.8 in diameter, the same size as most RTA's.

 

[AndriaD]

I ordered https://www.fasttech.com/p/1449701 the other day, my first one. It is not as fat as it looks-- that picture is in the shortest mode. It is a telescoping, which is best for 18650 + kick. It is 22.8 in diameter, the same size as most RTA's.

That's almost identical to my 'Fallen Angel' (EHPro EA Mod clone), except mine doesn't have the red o-rings. It's actually pretty small -- though they do look a lot bigger, in pics online. I was really surprised by how small it is, compared to my Sigelei Zmax -- but then, it doesn't have all the electronics as the sigelei, so that probably accounts for it.

Andria

 

[Stosh]

Gave in to a sale last week, bought a liter of nicotine concentrate for my freezer, cost $40. BUT with it, I'm assured I have increased my eliquid supply by about another 2.5 years. If they start taxing it federally or at the state & local level, I can still turn out 30 mL bottles (about a week's worth) of very good eliquid for less than $1.50

 

[DavidOck]

That sounds like MFS

Yeah, I did the same, thinking it's time to lay in a supply of nic.

MFS is also running more sales this week. The Maraxus clone is a whopping $8.74. https://www.myfreedomsmokes.com/mods-rbas/mechanical-telescoping/vape-mod-ecig-maraxus.html for those looking for a telescoping mech

 

[tj99959]

That sounds like MFS

Yeah, I did the same, thinking it's time to lay in a supply of nic.

MFS is also running more sales this week. The Maraxus clone is a whopping $8.74. https://www.myfreedomsmokes.com/mods-rbas/mechanical-telescoping/vape-mod-ecig-maraxus.html for those looking for a telescoping mech

A sale is only a good deal IF you need it.