When the first e-cigarettes hit the market a little over a decade ago, one of their biggest selling points was the fact that using an e-cigarette cost dramatically less than smoking. In those days, no one really knew whether switching to vaping could reduce the health risk of using nicotine. What they did know, though, was that vaping didn’t involve smoke, it didn’t smell bad, and it was unbelievably inexpensive compared to a pack-a-day smoking habit.
Today, most vapers still spend considerably less than they would spend on cigarettes. For some people, though, vaping and smoking have gotten much closer in price over the years. One of the reasons why vaping is more expensive these days is because replacement coils for vape tanks are much larger and more complex than they were in the past. Another reason is because today’s vaping devices are much more powerful than the devices of the past and therefore use a great deal more e-liquid.
If you’ve been vaping for a while, though, you already know those things because you’ve seen your expenses slowly creep up. You know you’re spending more on vaping than you did in the past, and that leaves just one question: What can you do to save money on vaping? In this article, we’ll share four actionable tips that can dramatically cut your vaping expenses.
Learn How to Clean Your Coils
Depending on how long you’ve been vaping, you might remember a time when e-liquid was your largest expense. Today, though, that’s no longer the case. Coils for vape tanks have become larger, more complex and more powerful than ever. People used to spend around $8-10 for a box of five vape coils. Today, it’s more like $15-17 for a box of four coils – or even three. Compound that with the fact that today’s heavily sweetened e-liquids leave so much gunk behind that they can render a coil virtually unusable in just a day or two, and replacement coils become a very serious expense. The cost of coils can mean that you’re spending upwards of $5 per day to vape before taking the cost of e-liquid into account.
That’s clearly too much money. So, what do you need to do? You need to learn
how to clean a vape coil. The fact that your coils are covered with gunk doesn’t mean that they’re bad – it just means that they’re dirty. If you clean your coils when they start to become caked with gunk, there’s no reason why you can’t use those same coils over and over again. Over time, that’ll save you a huge amount of money.
Give Unsweetened E-Liquid a Try
If you don’t want to clean your vape coils – or simply don’t want to clean them every day – then your next best option is to prolong the life of those coils by doing what you can to prevent them from getting gunky in the first place. The way to do that is by switching from sweetened e-liquid to unsweetened e-liquid because heavy usage of sucralose is precisely what causes your coils to become caked with foul-tasting gunk. When you use unsweetened e-liquid, on the other hand, it’s entirely possible – depending on how heavily flavored the e-liquid is – to use the same coil for weeks before its flavor quality begins to degrade. You might be surprised to learn that an e-liquid without an added sweetener can still taste quite sweet. It may not taste as sweet as candy, but unsweetened vape juice often has a flavor profile that’s impressively subtle and nuanced.
Consider Switching to a Lower-Output Vaping Device
Pre-built sub-ohm coils are the most expensive products that you’ll purchase as a vaper, and the easiest way to save money on coils is by making them last longer. We’ve already discussed two methods for doing that. One way is to clean the coils so you can reuse them several times. Another way is to use coil-friendly e-liquid that doesn’t cause your coils to become gunky so quickly. Let’s suppose, though, that you’re happy with the sweet flavors you’re currently vaping, and you don’t want to change. There is another option: You can switch to a vaping device that doesn’t consume as much e-liquid. The less e-liquid you use, the more slowly sucralose will collect on your atomizer coil. The end result is that your coils will last longer. If you combine that technique with cleaning your used coils, it’s entirely possible that you’ll be able to go months without buying new coils.
The most popular low-output vaping devices are refillable pod systems. If you switch from a sub-ohm device to a pod-based device, you’ll most likely have to increase the nicotine strength of your e-liquid to compensate because you’ll be inhaling much less e-liquid per puff than you currently do. That means you’ll probably be using nicotine salt, and the good news is that nicotine salt has been incredibly popular over the last couple of years. Many companies have released salt versions of their most successful e-liquids, so there’s a good chance that you’ll be able to continue using the same e-liquid flavor you currently use.
Start Building Your Own Coils
The final way to save money on coils is to stop spending so much on those coils in the first place. How would you like to spend a few pennies on each coil instead of several dollars? The way to do that is by buying a rebuildable atomizer – or a rebuildable head for your sub-ohm tank – and building your own coils.
If you’ve never built a vape coil before, you might be a little nervous about trying it. However, modern coil building tools make the job incredibly easy. A coil jig, for instance, makes it possible to build a perfect coil with little effort on your part; just insert the wire and twist.
You might ultimately decide that you’d rather spend a few dollars on a coil than go through the work of building coils from scratch. If you find the effort enjoyable, though, coil building can save you an enormous amount of money because bulk coil building supplies are incredibly inexpensive. All that you need is a spool of wire and a bag of organic cotton, and you can build a new coil every day for months.
