I originally managed to quit using a cigalike that ran cartridges with 18mg nic.
Then I went onto a cheap ego starter kit with a ce4 but I got frustrated after I realized I'd have to get a replacement ce4 and the juice although now it doesn't seem as bad though id have a hard time going back to that now but that ego battery broke off at the threading adapter. I got a replacement battery and tank in the same sort of packaging which I saw had the unscrewable bottom so I thought I could just replace the coils and keep that setup.
Found out I couldn't even get replacements for that head so i got an aspire ce5-s which took the bvc coils and used it on the cheap ego which worked for awhile but I realized the battery was weak and went down to the local vape shop and tried a vision spinner which was a radical improvement for that tank. I found a spinner on sale at another store for 20 so I grabbed one figuring I'd be set...
Started doing some research and looking into at some more sites and researching other gear and decided I wanted to move onto a higher wattage box mod so I could run whatever I wanted on it after trying my brother-in-laws sub-ohm setup. In the process I ended up having the first spinner I had break at the same connection while working right before break and I was tempted to go buy a pack to get through the day but my s.o. convinced me to just wait until after I got off to get a new spinner since they still had them (gotta love her, still have it as a backup if need be).
After about a month I was finally able to upgrade to a mvp 3 pro with an eleaf gs air ms. The eleaf tank is still what I mainly use for lack of fuss at this point. But in the last week I've already got a dark horse, a mutation v3, and I've been learning to build as well as now having a subtank mini en route to me. Though I want a backup mod now in case anything happens to the MVP.
sorry for ranting lol.
Tl;Dr I managed to quit using cigalikes but left something to be desired, got cheap setups and managed to stay off cigs but continued frustration, got some cheap upgrades to tie me over until I could afford something I wanted, but wished I could've just saved the money and got what I have now in the beginning and saved a lot of time and frustration and some money. But to be honest it was still probably cheaper then smoking would've been.