I still remember the moment I threw that last cigarette butt on the ground. It’s been almost 5 years since I quit smoking.

Health had always been a concern, but at the time, all I could think about was all the money I was going to save by quitting -money I was planning to spend on new cameras and lenses, of course. It was an exciting plan and it helped me quit.

Indeed, I was spending a lot of money on tobacco. It was hard to see on a daily basis, it was “just” $5 a day. But I did the math, and turned out to be more $2,000 a year. Or, the way I started to see it, a new A7iii every year.

Humans are terrible at understanding things that are far away in time. That’s why most services today are based on subscriptions: it’s just X a month!. These little things add up, though, and quite fast. Translating the annual cost into photography gear helps me see the big picture.

These are other ways I stopped wasting my money:

• I don’t drink alcohol anymore. I used to, at least one beer a day, and probably a glass of wine afterwards. Definitely more on the weekends. This amounted to even more money than smoking: 500 rolls of HP5 a year.

• Starbucks must miss me. I used to go there on a daily basis, spending at least a couple of good ND filters a month, or a new RX100vii a year.

• The brewery¹ we had downstairs in Portland? We used to go there at least once a week, and going through the charges of 2017, I see we spent a Hasselblad 500cm with 80mm lens on that one place in just 10 months. Today, I go out less often -and yes, the pandemic has helped quite a bit here- and save a lot of money.

• My phone (an iPhone 7 Plus) is 4 years old. I used to switch to a new phone every year, which cost me a round-trip to Iceland every 12 months.

A beer here. A coffee there. A dinner out. A new gadget. Nothing big, just little treats. But these small things add up and were making a dent on my savings.

Most people think that the key to save money is to make more, when it’s much easier -and faster- to lower your expenses and live below your means. And the good thing is, this doesn’t have to involve big changes, but we can do it by changing small bad habits we do on a daily basis.

Just by not smoking, not drinking alcohol, making coffee at home instead of getting it to go, cooking at home more often, and not buying a new phone every year, I’m saving a lot of money. Money I can invest on things like camera gear or a trip somewhere to make images. Translating those saving into specific things you can do with that money -like buying photography gear- can help.

Big change is always about the little things.

1: The brewery closed its doors just a few months after we left Portland. Apparently, they couldn’t afford rent anymore. Coincidence? Or did our departure have something to do? I will never know.