Well, here are my stats so far:
I have been quit for 3 Weeks, 2 Days, 18 hours, 48 minutes and 19 seconds (23 days). I have saved £347.23 by not smoking 951 cigarettes. I have saved 1 Week, 6 hours and 21 minutes of my life. My Quit Date: 16/12/2011 00:00.
Wow! £347.23! 
I didn't quit smoking to save money -- I did it for reasons that were MUCH more important to me -- so I haven't really taken much notice of the cost savings until now.
I have, however, decided to treat myself by purchasing a digital SLR camera. For anyone who's familiar with photography, I'm looking to get the Canon 550D or 600D. It's quite a big investment for a beginner like me -- somewhere between £500 - £600 -- but I think I deserve it.
I'll also save enought money each year to pay for a really nice holiday for the family, so I'll have plenty of opportunities to take some great photos. I got married in November and we had a really nice honeymoon, 5-star all inclusive for two weeks. It was lovely, but it wasn't cheap! But I've decided that I'll book it again for our first year anniversary. It's no problem, though -- I'll save approximately £5,329 a year by not smoking!
It was while on honeymoon that I decided to quit smoking, so it will have extra-special meaning for me. I remember that there were a lot of elderly and retired couples at the hotel. Having just been married myself, I had this wonderful thought: what if, in many, many years to come, we could do the same thing? Wouldn't that be so beutiful? And then it hit me: if I was going to have any chance of realising this dream, I had to stop smoking! Life's full of challenges at the best of times, and the odds will always be stacked against us. But I could certainly improve those odds by quitting, so that's exactly what I did.
It's strange. I used to worry about getting old. But not anymore. I'm sure that, sometimes, one or two of the older couples looked at us newly weds and thought how lucky we were to be starting our new, relatively young, lives together. Little did though know, I suspect, that I was looking at them thinking about how lucky they were to have already been able to share so much with each other -- to have, maybe, had the exact same dream as I do; to have lived it; to have seen it through to the end. I hope that I will one day be in their shoes -- and when I'm sitting there on my balcony, looking out over the grounds, I'll see a young couple just like we once were. And maybe I can sit back, relax, and think about about what a lucky, lucky person I am. Maybe.
