I am using single bottom coil tanks, drooling over twin coils, but what-am-I Rockefeller? Going from the standard 2ohm to 1.8ohm coils in a standard clearomizer makes a huge difference. If you are brand new at this try the lower ohm coils, trust me.
I made a dreadful mistake early on. I started with 650ohm batteries. These are just too small. No way they make enough vapor for anyone's satisfaction. Wasted money there. I find that 1100's at least sizzle the coil and don't cost hardly anything more. Once again if you are new and want to enjoy vaping, but not spend a lot of money? start with 1100's at least.
Some of the regular suppliers from the site here have sales!! I found a couple selling 10ml bottles of juice for 2 bucks apiece! 6 or 8 dollars for a 15ml bottle of juice just sucks!! Watch out for that. I stumbled across one I simply love. I ordered it along with some others (most of which I didn't like), and it turned out to be my total favorite of anything! Even better than Cosmic Fog's Milk and Honey, which is also great, but its very costly. I just ordered 8 more bottles.
heh
So vapers, whenever I read the forum I keep reading buy this $200 worth of gear or that $225 and upgrade to this or that. Does anyone actually pay attention to how much money they are spending to vape? Or does it just seem like unfettered money spending from here?
Is there any really good hardware that doesn't cost hundreds of dollars?
And how much a month do you really spend? Add it up, be honest.
yours Scott
Great, honest post! Not to nitpick or anything, but I just wanted to hone in a bit on your comment on batteries (mainly because this is a newbie forum, and many reading are just starting and new to the terminology and technology), specifically speaking, the battery's mAh rating doesn't effect the ability to fire the coil. Most non-adjustable e-cigarette batteries fire at 3.7 volts. The mAh determines for how long the battery will work at that output. Most e-cigarette batteries have a cutoff where once the battery drains to a certain point, they will stop working. The question is, from brand to brand, even model to model, will the e-cigarette let you fire at that reduced voltage and for how long? I know on my EMOW battery (it's adjustable voltage...but still has the cutoff), it only fires one or two times if the battery has drained (you can tell from the weak pulls) and then shuts off.
The nature of rechargeable batteries is that the longer you leave them discharged, the lower their capacity becomes of their lifecycle. So if you were to use a 650 mAh battery identically to an 1100 mAh battery, a larger percentage of the 650 mAh battery would be discharged. So with normal use over time, the 650 mAh battery would spend more time in a discharged state compared to the 1100 mAh battery, if the charging cycles are the same. Also, even though the batteries are rated at 3.7 volts, in actuality, a new, fully charged battery will usually fire out as high as 4.2 volts (on average) and then 'degrade' from there. So in a nutshell, a new 650 mAh battery charged frequently may outperform a 1100 mAh battery that is older and has not been fully charged.
Now back to your original question about money...
I started vaping back in November 2014. I had instances where I spent more money than I wanted. But over the course of time, it's all been way cheaper than buying cigarettes. My initial starter kit which was two ego batteries, some cheap plastic clearomizers and 4 bottles of e-liquid set me back about $50. Just two months later, an ego battery broke, and I ended up buying an EMOW kit after trying it and seeing how well it outperformed what I had. That was another $50. Then my EMOW battery broke after two months. In spite of the kit costing $45 + tax, I was able to find a replacement EMOW battery at
Health Cabin for $14! They are in China and between them and Fasttech, they have some of the lowest prices on equipment that I've seen. I also caught a sale at
Vapor Beast and picked up a VAMO V2 adjustable wattage mod and Kanger Genitank together for like $25. That was a steal for sure....but it was a clearance sale (they've since sold out of the VAMO V2s).
Initially I used to waste money on e-liquid. Would pick up bottles at gas stations and what not and they would be horrible (I still have them...because I'm in no hurry to vape them!). Probably wasted about $40 on bad e-liquid. Then I found some good vendors online. I placed a $20 order with Vape Wild (they are cheap) and I feel like I have enough, just from that one order, to last me a month! I could never say that with cigarettes! I also treated myself to a $30 order of premium e-liquid. But if I just had my cheap stuff...that would be fine.
I've only brought one pack of replacement coils so far since my EMOW kit came with 6 and my Genitank came with 2. That set me back like $8. Again, you find the best deals from China...and I think I had those on my HealthCabin order. Keep
Vapor Joes on your radar as well. The whole purpose of that site is to highlight sales and deals. That's how I found out about the clearance sale at Vapor Beast
And finally, my last piece of advice is to stay one step behind the pack. That's really the best way to save money! The vaping world tends to release new equipment constantly. The old equipment vaped just fine though. It's just that the next generation might have more features or be able to produce more vapor. Regardless, when something new comes out, the old equipment drops in price. So look for last year's latest and greatest item, not this year's. I'm telling you, you'll end up paying rock bottom prices for the same equipment others dropped a bunch of money on!
