Provided you buy every flavor in 10-15ml bottles at the start, a scale, bottles, pipettes, and a decent supply of PG/VG/Nic, once you get past the initial outlay for flavors, which might last a few months, you'll be in the hole, but, after that, you're just re-upping "trial" flavors, and the winners you want in bigger bottles. That works out to chump change when you consider what you're paying for premium or even house juice a month.

It's a rough investment at first, but it pays off quickly.

^(maybe a little slower if you're flavor-promiscuous like me.)

Watch this video. by u/Enyawreklaw . Breaks it down pretty well. Granted if you buy a bunch of flavors to create your own recipies it goes up drastically. But if you stick to a few tried and true recipies by other people the video is pretty accurate..nsfw or kids though (some cussing if I remember right)

My personal experience is that I've still spent less than I would have vaping "premium" juice despite constantly collecting flavourings and bottles.

If you're just intending to make recipes that are out there, you're going to save a lot of money. If you intend to make your own recipes then it's going to cost you a lot more. It's entirely dependent on the route you want to take.

I just did the breakdown on a recipe today where I made 400mL of juice using 6 flavors. It wound up being 3.4 cents per mL. This does not include taxes, shipping charges (because I always try to buy enough to get free shipping), coupons, or bottles and syringes.

 

Compare suicide bunny's mothers milk for 120mL for $65ish or Mad Murdock which is 30mL for $20. Brick and mortar's sell their 30mL for like $9-18 right? I always hated B&m juice so that normally wound up in the tradh after half a bottle anyway.

 

Let's compare one of the cheapest eliquid vendors that I know of, Vape wild. They sell 480mL for between $60-65. If my math is right, it winds up being 12.5 cents per mL (not including taxes, shipping, the bottle, and factoring in coupons or freebies.)

 

Additionally, what I use to make eliquid for 3.4 cents per mL can be used to make other flavors of eliquid. That 12.5 cents per mL bottle of eliquid is only ever going to be that one flavor.

I'm not representative of the diy community, but here's my experience:

After about a year of screwing around with different flavors, I got lazy/cheap and didn't buy flavors for a while. While a waited for a flavoring order to ship I just mixed without flavoring. Turns out plain vg is sorta yummy. Another year later and I almost exclusively vape flavorless juice. I could list a dozen unexpected benefits of the switch, but for the sake of your question, the important part is that it is dirt cheap.

About every 6 months I buy a quart of vg ($12 Amazon) and 120ml of 60mg nic in pg base ($12 wizard labs). Toss in a few bottles and syringes, and I spend about $60/year on juice.

I don't expect many people here want to ditch flavors, but if you vape primarily as a cheaper and safer alternative to cigarettes, it's worth your while to try flavorless for a few days and see what you think. I'd recommend trying it on a fresh build.

Well, I spent about $80 on my first order two months ago, and last week I got some more VG for $13. Husband and I both vape and were spending about $30 a week on juice. Since I starting mixing, we haven't bought any other eliquid, so in two months we have saved.... around $150, and we have enough supplies that we could keep on for several months without spending a dime. Not bad! We have been vaping for 5 months, and now we each have a few good setups that we really like, so we are now actually seeing the cost savings from smoking to vaping as well. Basically anything we buy at this point (other than batteries) is more of a splurge than a necessity.

How much juice do you use daily? As a dripper I was using almost 30ml a day and buying house juice for $20/30ml. Roughly $7200 a year. DIY, once I found a few recipes I enjoy as a rotation, costs roughly $5-6 a day(I haven't checked the cost lately and it's probably a high estimate). Less than $2000 a year. Friends and family will usually be asking for juice which can help off set the cost. Trade them 120ml for a $30 bag of 30ml bottles.

I started making my own juice three months ago. In that time I've spent a total of $160 on supplies. This includes vg, pg, nic, flavors, and mixing hardware.

Using this, I have supplied myself and a couple of friends with more high quality juice than we ever dreamed of. I still have about 1/3 of my ingredients.

So rough estimate, I'm spending about$30 a month on diy and giving away as much as I vape.

If I had started out with other people's recipes, and not wasted ample supplies working out my own, I would have spent even less.

No doubt, for sub ohm vapers who go through a lot juice, diy will save you $$$$$$$.

If you go through 2 ml a day, it might not have a big impact. If you go through many times that, you'll start to see savings right away. Either way, start small. Some investments, while fun, won't be justifiable if money is that important.

My personal opinion is that I don't care if I spend a small fortune on this, since it's keeping me off cigarettes. It's an investment in quality of life and a small price to pay for a better health. Plus, it's a fun hobby and I'd just spend the money on some other ultimately pointless entertainment.

Got a stater pack from nude nicotine for 30 dollars that included all the measuring equipment, 3 flavors, nicotine juice, pg, and vg for 30 dollars. Lasted me 2 months vaping about 5ml a day. Got about 250ml of of it I think. Way cheaper.

LOL $$$$$$$$$$$$$ :P

I started DIY 2 years ago... $55 would last me at least 4 months, whereas buying premixed would probably run me $150+(for the cheap American made juice,) or $400-$500 in cigarettes...

Right now I'm averaging between $0.04 and $0.07 per ML of juice. I get exactly what I want and I get to tweak things that are not what I'm in the mood for.

So for comparison, some the cheaper juice to buy online is from MBV (although I'm sure there is others out there as I have not bought in a LONG time), and they charge $7.99 for 30 ml or $0.27 per ML. NM not nearly as cheap as I thought...

Then there is some of the bigger and more popular people like Adirondack Vapor. Placid (one of the most popular) goes for $14.99 for 30 ML, or $0.50 ish per ML.

I have made a clone that is 'close' to that, and only costs $0.07 per ml and 'THE' most expensive one I can make as of right now. Savings over 120 ML is around $51.56.

You also know exactly what you are putting into it, and most of the time where it comes from. You can also step down the nicotine (if you use it) much more slowly than most options you can get online/B&M.

Just a few things in my personal experience.

I'm sure I haven't spent half as much as I spent on smoking one pack each day.

I have a great hobby, lots of mods, tanks, RDAs, mixing equipment, concentrates, bases and nic. I have two ADVs and hundreds of little bottles of experimental mixes, but I can't help but wonder if I need yet another vanilla concentrate.

Does the wife vape? If so, make her a 120ml bottle of e-liquid she loves and tell her it costed $3.

I pretty much vape for free now. I just buy diy supplies now, but that ain't shit compared to buying commercial juice all the time. I sell to a few people too. Bam. Put that money back into diy stuff. Repeat.

It's kind of dependent on your current spending habits as well as what route you decide to take with mixing, but yeah if you're just mixing up a couple of established recipes you're looking at spending maybe $5/mo in materials

Spent £80 a few weeks ago. Made £140 worth of ejuice compared to the brand I used to smoke. Sold some making around £30 and still have supplies to make a lot. I'm already nearly £100 up.

Start a spreadsheet and track what you make and tally it versus the cost of the juice you used to make

Having a family member own a shop and getting juice at cost from their distributor(usually 50% off), I still felt I was spending too much and found that DIY has saved me so much.

I can only imagine people that have to pay retail on juice and how much money they're throwing away.

After a small initial investment, you'll be making your own juice for around $1.00 per 30ml. You recoup that initial investment within a week or two just from not buying "premium" juice. From then on out its just smooth sailing.

I'll be spending $90.00 or less for 25 60ml bottles of liquid that should last 7-8 months. I don't think you can beat that cost at any B&M or online anywhere

Since I haven't heard this brought up before, you might consider letting your wife know that sets of DIY juices being sold barely used is fairly common on the classifieds groups, and I rarely see much of a delay. So, from an investment perspective, I think you're actually quite safe -- you'll be out some value since it isn't new, as well as the cost of shipping -- but I don't think it's completely wasted if a newbie buys 30 flavorings and then decides it isn't for them, for example.

As for the hassle -- this is definitely a hobby that requires some patience as you learn and find some good mixes that you can use regularly. That said, if you can do it, you can easily spend an hour and make quite a lot of juice that will last you quite awhile, so it's only as much of a hassle as you really want to make of it, I think.

Some of the recipes I've found around here taste better than the premium liquids I used to buy that were nearly $1/ml. I use Carolina Xtracts nicotine which is about double in price from NN or the other suppliers, and it still only costs me $1.50 per 30ml bottle to make.

I made 19 different flavors the other day, 2x 30ml bottles of each, and iirc when I crunched the actual numbers it came out to like $93 for 1.14L of liquid.

Over the last 4 months since I started, I have spent about $150. Still have a shitload of supplies. Was spending about $60 - 80 per month on budget juice. The cost for me has been less than half of my juice budget even buying all the one time shit like a scale. I managed to buy an rx200s with 2 sets of batteries and 2 new rdas and I'm still not over budget.

As long as you don't get sucked into the gotta have em all hype then you'll save money, or at the very least spend the same but be able to make wayyyyy more juice. I've gone through phases where I had to have this this this that and those, then I go months without ordering about flavors.

You said you were looking for money saving examples to show your wife? Just tell her instead of cooking any meals at home she should start only buying frozen dinners. See if that gets more expensive than making your own meals at home.

Last year, I bought flavoring a to make Pina guavsters (recipe I found here that is a blend of tbd and tvc Pina guavada) in 4oz bottles along with 1 gal of pg and 2 gal of vg. Still working my way through it all.

It took me about a month to find a few things I liked well enough to go "okay, I can vape this and not miss premium liquids." Now, I prefer my own liquids and already have all the hardware I need. I can make a 120mL bottle for about 5.50, and a dollar of that is the cost of the bottle, so it's actually less than that most of the time.

It's sort of a situation where you spend more at first, but once you get a system in place it becomes significantly less expensive than buying from a store. Also, the liquids are WAY better than any "house juices" I have had.

Keep a spreadsheet on Google Docs. Install Sheets on your phone. Before buying something trivial, take a look at how much you've spent Vs. how much you've saved.

Then blow the savings on mods and shit. I look like a fucking YouTube reviewer with all these mods and attys lying around. I literally have a mod/atty combo for every recipe I make.

In your second year, after you have bought everything you could ever reasonably buy, you'll start to save money. Looking at my own spreadsheet; I've saved $1,500 so far in nearly two years of DIYing.

Well I spent 90 bucks(1gallon VG, 120ml 100mg Nic, tons of flavors) and yeah I might have to buy a couple more flavorings but this equals out to roughly 3700ml...seems worth it to me...

P.S: Tried a few recipes I found, wasn't a fan, started looking at recommended percentages and mixing what I think would taste good together and could not be happier with the flavors, it's easier then I though tbh.

think I've spent around 150 - 200.. total on diy this year (including wick wire and bottles) ..at a 10 to 15 ml a day habit i'm still set for a while.. will need to restock on vg pg and nic around black friday again.

id say i ruffly cut my liquid expenses to about 1/8th of what it was and i vape more of it than i used to due to better equipment. it would be more savings if i didn't have the occasional unvapeable mix pop up every now and then. (managed to make 60 mls once that tasted like plastic and unsalted butter.. still unsure what happen there)

in relative terms i dont even know i how i afforded cigs one month of that is like my entire budget now.

My personal experience: For the first few months, it was actually more expensive. But after I nailed down a few all day vapes (it's not that hard with all the info out there), it's far cheaper. My most expensive juice costs me about 4$/60ml. I keep making the same ~10 recipes.

DIY is still very mystical to new vapers and it seems so technical that's most can't be bothered. On this basis I've tried explaining to people how simple it is and the responses I got were "if it's so simple would you mind making me some next time you do a batch?" Cha-ching!

Now I don't make money off of my friends exactly but we all go through different flavours and clones and have a bit of a vote on what we like and I make orders online now for around £100 a month. What I charge people covers my costs of testing and materials usually leaving me with a few bottles to vape myself. It's a pretty cushy little deal to be honest.

I've spent more on DIY in a month than I did on a year on juice. BUT, I have enough now to make several years of juice, and sell some to friends

Shop I go to sells 'house blends' 30ml for $15 + tax (.06% in FL), unless there's sales. When there are, it's b2g1. so a little over $30 for 90ml on sale.

I can get 1000ml of PG and 1000ml of VG at Bullcity for $15 each. Flavoring is dirt cheap too, depending on what you're getting. assuming a 50/50 mix (I do 80/20 vg / pg) that's 2000ml for 30+ shipping, vs 30 for 90ml. That's a big savings, even after you factor in flavoring and nicotine cost.

Late to your party, but I wanted to add something.

This is my first DIY post, I just got my flavors and VG last night, and this is how I justified it to my GF:

I spent $91.05 on VG, Nic, and flavors. The total production will be 3.33 liters of ejuice. At 3333ml, that works out to 111 30ml bottles.

I typically vape 15ml/day, so that $91.05 works out to about $0.41 cents a day for juice.

I last ordered juice 30 days ago, and I spent $110.47. I still have about two weeks worth, but even at 6 total weeks that's $2.63 per day. And THAT was ordering during 50% off/BOGO sales.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha.

No.