Obviously a lot of debate can be made on the health benefits of quitting smoking. But, is there a time that smoking could be good for you? It is pretty much universally accepted that smoking creates major health risks and reduce life expectancy, so how could it possibly be good for you?

The health implications this habit is great news for smokers who have a limited retirement fund or have plans to spend their retirement frivolously. As health risks go up, their life expectancy decreases, which means less money is needed to get through retirement. But then again, health costs increase.

This is not intended to persuade you to quit smoking, but to show you how small, incremental expenses ad up to large expenses. Likewise, small, incremental investments turn into large investment portfolios.

For example, here’s a look at a person who smokes one pack of cigarettes a day. A $5 pack of cigarettes costs roughly $150 a month, or $1,825 a year. If our one-pack-a-day smoker starts smoking at age 18 until he is able to access his 401k at 59 1/2, that’s $76,000 in life-time smoking expenses. This does not even account for inflation and regular tax hikes imposed on tobacco.

If our smoker decided to quit at 19 and invested his $150 in the stock market every month, this would increase his retirement account by almost $1,200,000.00.

Whether your vice is smoking, expensive coffee, or eating out regularly, these expenses are impeding your ability to reach your financial goals. The only down side to quitting smoking is that our former smoker might need more money for retirement to get through their increased life expectancy.

Millionaire Money Habit: While it is important to spend money and treat yourself to the finest things in life once in a while, over-indulgence is never a good thing. The cost, and often health, implications are costing you too much in too many ways. If you have a habit that is flushing money down the toilet, set yourself a goal to kick that behavior. Better yet, create some millionaire money habits. -RT

There are a lot of services that provide tax advice or tax preparation. It’s highly recommended to seek the advice and consultation of a tax advisor, but if you do not have many complicated investments or tax deductions, using an online e-Filing tax software program would be an appropriate and inexpensive way to file your taxes.

Online e-filing software programs will hold your hand and give you step-by-step instructions to complete the process, and there’s no paperwork! Most will give you suggestions on deductions you may not even be aware of, so you can get the biggest tax returns.

If you have used a particular program in the past, filing is even easier. Most programs allow you to login with the same information you used in the past, and it will retrieve last year’s return for you, which means you don’t have to go digging through files trying to find old tax forms.

Here’s a tip: most of these online tax filing programs charge a few extra dollars to file your state taxes. Go through the process of filing your state taxes through the program and print out the paperwork before submitting your state taxes through them. All of the work will be done for you and you can now file your state taxes on your own without being charged the additional fee. Generally you can file your state taxes through the state’s Department of Revenue free eFiling option. Just be sure to print your tax form out before the stage that will charge you for printing your paperwork.

eFiling online is faster too. By using electronic tax filing you will get your refund electronically deposited to your bank account in as few as 8 days. Most also guarantee that you will get the maximum tax return. According to the Turbo Tax policy:

• If you pay an IRS or state penalty or interest because of a TurboTax calculation error, we’ll pay you the penalty and interest.
• If you get a larger refund or smaller tax due from another tax preparation method, we’ll refund the applicable TurboTax federal and/or state purchase price paid.
• Satisfaction Guaranteed-or you don’t pay.

If you file with Turbo Tax now, they are offering efiling and tax preparation for free! You can’t beat that.

Millionaire Money Habit: Visit the site above to get started with filing your tax returns now to take advantage of their free offer while it lasts. The quicker you get your tax return, the faster you can invest that money and put it to work for you.

Here is this week’s huge list of some of the best personal finance articles from around the web. There was just too much good advice published to not include any of these great articles.

To kick start your week, spend some time digging through the Millionaire Money Habits archives and the links below to improve your financial literacy.

Money & Investing:

• Bar Stool Economics & How Taxes Work at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity
• Roth IRA Versus Traditional – Which is Better? at Cash Money Life
• 7 Things Women Wish Men Knew About Money at beingfrugal.net
• Should you Share Financial Information with Family? at Credit Withdrawal
• Net Worth Values – The Rich Get Richer? at fivecentnickle.com
• Six Persistent Money Myths That Seem To Stick Around at The Simple Dollar
• Buy Low and Sell High at MoneyNing
• The Power of Positive Cash Flow at Get Rich Slowly
• Inflation: A Concept I Wish I Understood Much Earlier at I’ve Paid for This Twice Already

Recession Fears & Planning:

• Down Year Ahead? How It Can Be Good For Your Investments at The Digerati Life
• Warren Buffett is a “Huge Bull” on the American Economy (A YouTube Interview) at The Dough Roller
• Spending, Recession, and the Great Depression at My Money Blog

Credit Cards & Debt:

• 3 Steps to Take When Credit Card Companies Raise Your Rates at Mrs. Micah: Finance for a Freelance Life
• 15 Ways to Establish and Improve Your Credit History and FICO Score at Generation X Finance
• Do You Think It Is OK To Walk Away From A Mortgage You Cannot Afford? at My Two Dollars
• How Can They Afford That? at Gather Little By Little
• Credit Card Balance Transfers: Pros, Cons and Caveats at mint

Savings:

• How Much Money Do You Keep in Your Main Account? at Plonkee Money
• How Strong is Your Piggy Bank? at Mighty Bargain Hunter
• How to Save a Million Dollars at Any Age: 45 Years Old at Consumerism Commentary

Person Money Stories:

• I Missed My Goal, Dealing With Failure at Moolanomy
• Big Goals for 2008! at My Dollar Plan
• Learning From Failure at Green Panda Treehouse
• Marching To Debt Freedom – Couple #1 – Month 05 at JosephSangl.com
• Joseph Sangl: I Was Broke, Now I’m Not at Lazy Man and Money
• Who Makes the Investment Decisions in Your Household? at AllFinancialMatters

Career & Life:

• Job Jumper Tip #3: It’s Not All About the Money at Brip Blap
• 8 Ways to Take It to the Next Level at lifehack.org

Millionaire Money Habit: To build wealth, you need to perpetually improve your financial literacy. Digest as much information as possible and stick to a plan that works for you. In addition to the articles above, browse through the suggested readings listed at the very bottom of this website’s page, and be sure to subscribe to our RSS feed or by email.