Like others here, my startup cost was high. My wife and I both started
vaping about a month ago - we had both mate folks at our respective jobs who seemed enthralled with it so we figured we'd try it out. She dropped about $100 on Ego startup kits and juice from a local B&M. (Which I now see could be had online for about 1/3 of that.) A battery died, got replaced, that one died, got replaced, that one broke, got replaced.
Frustrated, she went out and bought us a pair of iTaste vv's, which we've used reliably since then, for another $80 or so. Couple extra tanks added on, another $20ish.
So that was over $200 by about day 4 of our
vaping just in hardware.
Oh, and for the first 2 weeks . .no, 3, we had constant problems that we couldn't figure out with clogging/spurting/not working . . .seemed like a TON of maintenance and we were going through new heads like twice a day each. This was actually what caused me to go online to see what was up and I found this place . . .and that it was probably a juice causing the problems. This Cappucino is super dark. Stopped using it and haven't had to replace a head since. So that was another $30-40 blown in coil heads and juice we can't use (plus a lot of stress and headaches constantly dismantling, cleaning, and replacing stuff every 30 mins or so.)
So for awhile there, we were questioning the economic validity of vaping ourselves. Even after we got sorted with the vv's, a $10 pack of heads + juice a day seemed quite a bit.
BUT, from the second we started with our spendier-than-expected capital outlay, and even through all the equipment problems, user error, frustrations, headaches, and everything else . . .neither of us has had an actual smoke. We both really really enjoyed vaping from the second we started, even through the problems, so I was determined to make this work as simply as possible.
Now that I know there are so many online resources for information, hardware, juice, etc., I can see this costing us maybe $40-50/week if that. It's like starting anything new; you need to find your groove, supplies that work for *you* and you usually end up with stuff you didn't really need in the process. Still experimenting with juices - I've found about 3 really solid ones I like from local shops but I see Mt Baker is waaay cheaper and has solid reviews so we'll be trying some of their stuff shortly. That would shave even more off the cost. I've found the kind of tank I like, so experimenting with those shouldn't be necessary.
We smoked a lot. In the neighborhood of 5 packs a day between us for 20 years. At gas station rates where we were in WA that would have been $40+/DAY! Now, we had always bought cheap at reservations so we didn't pay that much, and for the last 5 years or so had been making our own at home, but still that was about $30 for a bag of tobacco and 3 cartons of tubes a couple times a week. So yeah, $60/week was a ton cheaper than $280, and yeah, now that we're set up with the initial outlay vaping will be even cheaper still by a small margin, moreso if we start using cheaper juices (or eventually DIYing that too.)
But there's no tobacco and tubes laying all over. No ashtrays. No butts. No packs, boxes, or wrappers. No smell. No stained fingers or teeth or walls. No burnholes in clothes. You know . .I never really realized just how much of a mess smoking makes until we quit lol.
Oh, and there's the whole thing where I haven't coughed in a month, my cold lasted 2 days instead of 2 weeks, and we're not killing ourselves. So even if we weren't saving money over our cheapo DIY smokes, we'd still keep on it.
tl;dr: Yeah, vaping is cheaper even compared to homemade smokes. "Collecting" is another matter entirely and will cost whatever you want to spend.
