Quit smoking and get saving - take advantage of National No smoking Day

With the price of a packet of fags now around £5.00 - adding up to £1,825 a year if you smoke 20 a day - it really is money up in smoke. Thats a nice tidy sum that could give you a marvellous boost for your savings. If you saved all that away have you thought what this could achieve in only few years if it was placed in a high interest savings account, a mini cash individual savings account ISA or an investment or pension fund?

Giving up smoking isn't easy but when you think that 80% of the price you pay for your habit goes in taxes putting £12 billion a year into the taxman's pocket, its enough to make you want to give up. From 1 July, England will follow Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and smoking will be banned in all enclosed public places such as offices, bar and restaurants, which will make it easier to give up - that is if you don't break the habit on 14 March - No Smoking Day.

Marks & Spencer Money said that around half of England's 12.4 million smokers are expected to try to give up once the ban comes into place and that smokers could save on average of £125 a month.

Clear your debts first!

However, before you start saving, you really need to clear debts. On average we have £3,170 in credit card debt, according to National Savings & Investments NS&I. Switching to a 0% card and using the extra savings gained from not smoking will help you get rid of debt at a faster rate.

Paying extra off the mortgage could save you a fortune and enable you to pay it off years earlier. Paying an extra £100 a month on a £70,000 mortgage could save you £23,618 in interest and reduce a 25-year term to 17 years based on an interest rate of 5.95%.

If you've got an offset mortgage, you could put the savings from quitting smoking into your offset savings account. Clydesdale Bank said that if a couple with a starting savings balance of £16,000 added in £3,640 a year - the amount they could have spent on smoking - they could save themselves £81,940 in interest and cut their 25-year mortgage term by seven years on a £150,000 mortgage, that is assuming an interest rate of 6.2% APR.