Vaping - The obsession is real
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I also used to bring home the nice glass logo ashtrays from hotels that I stayed at.....I have no idea where any of them are now.
I must be one of the lucky ones. I found this forum before I started spending. Everybody else did my homework for me. 
I decided when I quit smoking to put all my savings into an IRA so I'm ultra cheap. I'm probably still only ahead by 10 bucks but it's a start 
Nauti on a 30w istick
Nauti mini on a 20w Istick (in case the Nauti fails)
Metal carved out tanks for both Nautis
I'm happy as a clam until the inevitable day when I try an rda. sigh
I decided when I quit smoking to put all my savings into an IRA so I'm ultra cheap. I'm probably still only ahead by 10 bucks but it's a start Nauti on a 30w istick
Nauti mini on a 20w Istick (in case the Nauti fails)
Metal carved out tanks for both Nautis
I'm happy as a clam until the inevitable day when I try an rda. sigh
These are absolutely gorgeous. I had to replace the glass on one of my Nauti Mini's and got one. While I was at it, I replaced the other Nauti Mini and the Nauti as well. The only downside to them is it makes it difficult to see how low your juice level is...especially if the juice is clear.
Cool. After some experiments I am almost thinking I prefer the 1.2 in the Nano and the .5 in the mini. The .5 in the nano is almost too hot for me. Good choice though, I think I'm headed out to get a 5 pack of 1.2's tomorrow!
I finally got an EHpro KFL+, a gold one which looks so sharp on my gun-metal vamo. But I still prefer my Tobeco KFL+'s... because you can loosen the 510 screw to lengthen it without disturbing the coil mount at all -- with the EHpro, it you bother the 510 screw at all, it loosens the coil mount so it wiggles around and screws up the resistance. Also, in the EHpro, when you unscrew the base to do something to the coil, it's hard to get the chimney-top free of the topcap's small inner o-ring, it usually loosens the chimney top, which makes it twice as messy; the tobecos, it comes out very nicely, doesn't loosen the chimney top at all, so you can rinse the base w/chimney attached before you need to unscrew the whole chimney from the base, so it's not nearly as messy to handle. You might think that since the tobeco's chimney is a bit shorter, doesn't engage that small o-ring so completely, that it would have air-flow/leaking/gurgling problems... but they don't; they work perfectly. The vape is much the same, but those very small details make the tobecos much easier to deal with. Even if the gold EHpro is prettier.
Andria
Hey, Andria, please back check in here when you actually start saving money. Lol!
I've been saving money since I started. When I smoked, it was $88 twice a month, come hell or high water, and that sometimes meant less groceries bought. Since I started vaping, I've spent maybe half to two-thirds of what I would have spent on smoking. I never spend money I don't have -- our credit cards stay pretty close to their limit at all times, so there's none of this "I charged my credit card up so high I don't know how I'll pay it." My husband has been able to return, in a small way, to his coin-collecting
But I also don't have a list like those I've been seeing in here. I bought some starter stuff at first, which no longer gets used, but most of it was very cheap -- 6 T3S's, an ARO Pyrex, an ARO Winder, a Smok UDCT (cartotank). I also got 3 vv3's as "starter" mods, (one for $40 and two for $27 each) but they do sometimes still get used; my current line-up, which I use pretty much all the time, are:
a Sigelei Zmax ($37),
a Vamo v2 ($17),
a Fallen Angel (mech) ($40),
a Galileo (mech) ($34),
Smok Kicks in both mechs (avg of $15 each),
2 tobeco KFL+'s ($32.95 each),
an EHpro KFL+ ($25),
a Magma clone ($19),
and I'll soon be buying a Veritas clone, $19.
and of course batteries for all the above --
4 efest 18350s, 2 AW 18350s
2 efest 18490s, 2 AW 18500s,
3 efest 18650s, once of which is already defunct.
That list, of my still-currently-active hardware, started last April; the most recent additions were the Magma (last month) and the Galileo+Kick (right after xmas), the EHpro KFL+ and the 2 AW 18500s (January).
Andria
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This thread is making me realize that my "obsession" with buying vape devices and gear really isn't as bad as I thought it was!
Having said that, I can think of a hundred worse things to spend my money on....
Having said that, I can think of a hundred worse things to spend my money on....
Andria, I was being a little tongue in cheek. But in a related thread I suggested that the amount spent is exponentially proportional to the amount of time spent here on ECF. Then, applying that simple principle, and just thinking about your acticity in the TFA DIY thread, I figured you could easily be spending more than $176.mo just on flavors and DIY paraphrenalia
Again somewhat tongue in cheek, but I admire you for keeping things fairly reasonable although you did not disclose your DIY flavor stockpile
I'm pretty sure I'm saving money now, but my DIY flavor bill last month was pretty extreme. I'm over 100 flavors now but I think I exhausted myself on that. There can't be that many more to buy, and I'll never even try most of what I have- too time consuming
Haha!
I think I was spending around $230/mo on smokes. A little more than you.
Again somewhat tongue in cheek, but I admire you for keeping things fairly reasonable although you did not disclose your DIY flavor stockpile
I'm pretty sure I'm saving money now, but my DIY flavor bill last month was pretty extreme. I'm over 100 flavors now but I think I exhausted myself on that. There can't be that many more to buy, and I'll never even try most of what I have- too time consuming
Haha!I think I was spending around $230/mo on smokes. A little more than you.
Andria, I was being a little tongue in cheek. But in a related thread I suggested that the amount spent is exponentially proportional to the amount of time spent here on ECF. Then, applying that simple principle, and just thinking about your acticity in the TFA DIY thread, I figured you could easily be spending more than $176.mo just on flavors and DIY paraphrenalia
Again somewhat tongue in cheek, but I admire you for keeping things fairly reasonable although you did not disclose your DIY flavor stockpile
I'm pretty sure I'm saving money now, but my DIY flavor bill last month was pretty extreme. I'm over 100 flavors now but I think I exhausted myself on that. There can't be that many more to buy, and I'll never even try most of what I have- too time consuming
I think I was spending around $230/mo on smokes. A little more than you.
Hmm, I don't really know for sure how many flavors I have, but it's not extreme; I have a couple of ADVs, and I mostly buy flavors to support those, plus a few extras here and there as I work on creating new ADVs. And everything involved in the DIY effort is cheaper than smoking, by FAR -- even the most expensive part, the nicotine, and glass bottles to put it in. Going nuts on flavors CAN get expensive, I agree, but I really don't do that; I buy about 30-60ml of pure flavors every month; got a pretty good bit of nic stashed (about a year's worth, and I buy another 120ml/$10 whenever I can), and a fair supply of PG/VG -- got about 1.5 pints left of PG, and about 3/4 pint left of VG (I don't use much VG); those pint bottles are $3.95 each, and Amazon's shipping isn't bad.
Neither health concerns nor expense was why I started vaping -- I just wanted to come in from the cold.
But once I discovered the enormous possible savings, I set out to economize wherever possible -- DIY; making my own coils/wicks; hunting bargains; always buying clones of the expensive items; buying inexpensive Kicks to put in mechs (far cheaper than buying electronic mods!). I'm a skin-flint to the bone (and my husband LOVES that, because he's not!). He's just loving the hell out of no more every-other-day $11 trips to Walgreens. When I mention I want to buy something, he just says "can we afford that?" (I keep the budget). If the answer is yes -- and it always is, or I wouldn't suggest buying anything -- then he just shrugs and says "buy whatever you need."The most expensive part of vaping, for me, is the WTA I need; but in January, I began reducing my 10% mixture of WTA, by one percentage point a month. March is nearly over, so it's time to drop again, now to 6%, so even that expense is lessening, and by the end of September, should be gone entirely -- and I'll be keeping some for "just in case" even after my regular use is over -- if I ever did get those godawful cravings again, much better to vape some WTA, than EVER smoke another cigarette.
Andria
Well, Andria, you probably have about the lowest $ spent per post ratio in this entire forum. I commend you for that 
Actually, the flavoring is the big cost, even on just a theoretical level (cost/ml). I figure my cost of 24mg unflavored juice at about $0.025/ml. That's based on $50/liter for 100mg nic and about $17/liter for PG/VG (I use MFS). Flavorings generally cost $0.15 - $0.28/ml, notwithstanding the amazing value of Heartland's 4 oz prices, but even that runs around $0.06/ml. So I figure the average net ejuice cost cost for me would be a little over $.07 for 24mg juice flavored at 35%, just as a comparative example or almost 3x unflavored cost. A little over $1 per 15ml bottle. Not counting the cost of the bottle, which may be reusable many times, depending on things.
WTA, of course, is prohibitively expensive, on a relative basis and I hope for the sake of your wallet that you can wean yourself off that.
I do most of my vaping through Mutation X drippers. I go through more than 10ml a day. If I didn't DIY I would be spending as much as I did for 2.5 PAD, just in eJuice, without factoring hardware. I have almost 2 liters of 100mg nic in the freezer, as vapocalypse and taxpocalypse insurance. I'm down to 6mg now, and I hope to get down to 3 in the next month or two. And never needed WTA. Actually I probably did need WTA, when I first quit but I toughed it out. In some ways I wish I had known about that, in other ways I don't. Just because of the cost.
Actually, the flavoring is the big cost, even on just a theoretical level (cost/ml). I figure my cost of 24mg unflavored juice at about $0.025/ml. That's based on $50/liter for 100mg nic and about $17/liter for PG/VG (I use MFS). Flavorings generally cost $0.15 - $0.28/ml, notwithstanding the amazing value of Heartland's 4 oz prices, but even that runs around $0.06/ml. So I figure the average net ejuice cost cost for me would be a little over $.07 for 24mg juice flavored at 35%, just as a comparative example or almost 3x unflavored cost. A little over $1 per 15ml bottle. Not counting the cost of the bottle, which may be reusable many times, depending on things.
WTA, of course, is prohibitively expensive, on a relative basis and I hope for the sake of your wallet that you can wean yourself off that.
I do most of my vaping through Mutation X drippers. I go through more than 10ml a day. If I didn't DIY I would be spending as much as I did for 2.5 PAD, just in eJuice, without factoring hardware. I have almost 2 liters of 100mg nic in the freezer, as vapocalypse and taxpocalypse insurance. I'm down to 6mg now, and I hope to get down to 3 in the next month or two. And never needed WTA. Actually I probably did need WTA, when I first quit but I toughed it out. In some ways I wish I had known about that, in other ways I don't. Just because of the cost.
Well, the first time I quit, last February, I didn't *need* the WTA, though I certainly could have benefitted from it at the 3wk and 3mo points, with the depression I suffered. But after my appendectomy, when I went back to smoking, I managed to stop that and get back to smoke-free after a month -- and then 10 days later, happy as everything to be smoke-free again... the godawful cravings came back; if I hadn't already gotten some WTA to have on-hand when I got to the 3wk and 3mo points a 2nd time, I'm certain I wouldn't have made it, but the WTA stopped those cravings completely. So, I can't see it as a "prohibitive" cost -- this 2nd time around, it's been a necessary cost, in order to remain smoke-free, because if I had to suffer the bone-deep cravings, I'd never have been able to quit smoking -- just like before e-cigs ever existed.
My main impetus to decreasing my percentage towards getting free of it isn't totally about the cost, though that's certainly part of it. Mainly I'm just very afraid of what will happen to WTA, after the FDA gets their fingers into it far enough -- if the ANTZ think *nicotine* is "dangerous," I'd hate to hear what they have to say about 'whole tobacco alkaloids'... even though some of those alkaloids are currently being researched for all sorts of ailments. I'd rather get free of it slowly, of my own choosing, than find myself in a position of still needing it but not being able to get it at all -- and also, being able to vape plain nicotine will cut costs tremendously, and may even be beneficial to my asthma -- a lot of my asthma problems started after I started using the WTA. Once I'm free of it, I may also be able to wean myself from the Advair -- which I get for free, thanks to low income/no insurance, so cost isn't a consideration there; just my health, since there are surely adverse long-term side effects from ANY use of ANY steroidal medication.
I probably go thru about 5ml per day of my main ADV, then probably a few more ML of a few others; it's hard to know for sure, because I have 2-4 diff attys that I use daily, though only one of those all day long (the strawberry/cream DIY). And that's supported by having made 150ml of that strawberry/cream juice this month, of which I still have about 10-20ml, just about enough to see out the month before I need to make more, at the 6% WTA level. A 60ml bottle of that, I've figured, costs right at $10 (and yep, half of that cost is the WTA!), so that's about $25/mo for my ADV -- compared to the $176 I was spending on smoking. In that budget, $12.50/mo for WTA really isn't that costly, and the effect: keeping me from even WANTING to smoke -- PRICELESS. When you recall that I was spending $11 every other day for cigarettes, you see how cheap that WTA really is!
Andria
My main impetus to decreasing my percentage towards getting free of it isn't totally about the cost, though that's certainly part of it. Mainly I'm just very afraid of what will happen to WTA, after the FDA gets their fingers into it far enough -- if the ANTZ think *nicotine* is "dangerous," I'd hate to hear what they have to say about 'whole tobacco alkaloids'... even though some of those alkaloids are currently being researched for all sorts of ailments. I'd rather get free of it slowly, of my own choosing, than find myself in a position of still needing it but not being able to get it at all -- and also, being able to vape plain nicotine will cut costs tremendously, and may even be beneficial to my asthma -- a lot of my asthma problems started after I started using the WTA. Once I'm free of it, I may also be able to wean myself from the Advair -- which I get for free, thanks to low income/no insurance, so cost isn't a consideration there; just my health, since there are surely adverse long-term side effects from ANY use of ANY steroidal medication.
I probably go thru about 5ml per day of my main ADV, then probably a few more ML of a few others; it's hard to know for sure, because I have 2-4 diff attys that I use daily, though only one of those all day long (the strawberry/cream DIY). And that's supported by having made 150ml of that strawberry/cream juice this month, of which I still have about 10-20ml, just about enough to see out the month before I need to make more, at the 6% WTA level. A 60ml bottle of that, I've figured, costs right at $10 (and yep, half of that cost is the WTA!), so that's about $25/mo for my ADV -- compared to the $176 I was spending on smoking. In that budget, $12.50/mo for WTA really isn't that costly, and the effect: keeping me from even WANTING to smoke -- PRICELESS.
When you recall that I was spending $11 every other day for cigarettes, you see how cheap that WTA really is! Andria
Andria, I did say WTA is *RELATIVELY* prohibitively expensive, as in cost per ml. Relative is, well, relative . I'll admit though that using "prohibitively" could have overdramatized matters a bit. But doubling the overall cost of the juice is surely "significant".
I think it's great having WTA as an option. Far better than risking relapse back to smoking or otherwise enduring "pain" of withdrawal. Like you I have concerns about regulatory issues, and I lump that into a "cost risk" kind of thing. Although it could easily be just made illegal since it is not very popular, in the grand scheme of vaping, and therefore the tax value is not very significant.
. I'll admit though that using "prohibitively" could have overdramatized matters a bit. But doubling the overall cost of the juice is surely "significant".I think it's great having WTA as an option. Far better than risking relapse back to smoking or otherwise enduring "pain" of withdrawal. Like you I have concerns about regulatory issues, and I lump that into a "cost risk" kind of thing. Although it could easily be just made illegal since it is not very popular, in the grand scheme of vaping, and therefore the tax value is not very significant.
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I think at some point, it won't be available any longer, due to the impending "regulation". As mentioned, some of those alkaloids are being researched for other ailments, and you know that once they have a medical use for any of those ingredients, the cost will probably increase by at least a factor of 10, if not 100. 
If they're available to the public at all. I'd love to think that vaping will just go on and on as I've come to know and love it, but I can see the writing on the wall, and I'd far rather be ahead of impending events by weaning myself now from the WTA in a way that doesn't leave me vulnerable to relapse -- verrrry slowly. I think I've got time... *just*.
Andria
If they're available to the public at all. I'd love to think that vaping will just go on and on as I've come to know and love it, but I can see the writing on the wall, and I'd far rather be ahead of impending events by weaning myself now from the WTA in a way that doesn't leave me vulnerable to relapse -- verrrry slowly. I think I've got time... *just*. Andria
Sounds like a good excuse to stockpile some WTA. Worst case you can sell it, and it may appreciate in value. Of course you would likely then be a criminal since all these regs are basically criminalizing all this. Sigh.
Here's the good news. Now that you upgraded you have two glass nauti tanks gathering dust. I just found the bottom hardware on the Aspire website for 10 bucks so for 20 clams you can have two more awesome tanks! I just gotta wait the one month to infinity for foreign vape mail!
I'm fairly certain that the way to keep WTA available is to keep buying it - at least my guy is stubborn that way. It makes zero sense to preemptively eliminate something on the presumption that it will be treated any differently than nicotine, which is truly the evil badness the powers seem to think they need to eradicate. Nobody has said, nobody has even alluded to WTA being any special target now or in the future. And if WTA would be accepted and sought after as some sort of treatment I'd know a very rich man and I'd be bathing in it for free.I think at some point, it won't be available any longer, due to the impending "regulation". As mentioned, some of those alkaloids are being researched for other ailments, and you know that once they have a medical use for any of those ingredients, the cost will probably increase by at least a factor of 10, if not 100.
Andria
Well I'll be buying it thru most of this year, and plan to have some stashed in the cabinet even after my regular use ends -- for 'just in case.' Then I'll have to see how I do, without it. I've been reducing it by one percentage point a month since the first of the year, and so far have had zero problems from the reduction. If I could get by without it, I'd have more budget for shiny stuff.
Andria
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