If you smoke, you will pay a higher premium for your life cover compared to a non-smoker. That is because medical research shows smoking seriously damages your health and reduces your life expectancy on average by up to ten years. If you need to buy life insurance, don’t wait until you quit smoking, even if you have to pay more, be sure to protect your family now by purchasing life insurance at smoker rates.
Everyone knows that a person who smokes a pack of cigarettes a day is considered a smoker. But you may not know that all insurance companies consider you a smoker if you smoke cigarettes occasionally or smoked cigarettes at any time during the last year or smoke cigars regularly.
Should I Tell the Truth? It is tempting to lie about smoking on your application form but the lie is not only morally wrong, it can be dangerous. Insurance policies have a 1-year contestability period, which means that if you were to die in the next year, the company may contest your claim, and refuse to pay if they find out you were a smoker. That could happen even if you died from a motor accident, or something else unrelated to smoking.
Insurance companies use a nicotine test to check if you are a smoker. If you lie and the company sees you have nicotine in your system, they may not confront you, but they will offer you smoker rates, not non-smoker. Even if you are not requested to undergo a test, you will still need to tell them you are a smoker, and pay smoker rates. It just isn’t worth it trying to get around the fact that smoking does affect your health and your life insurance rates.
To reduce the cost of your life insurance, try to quit smoking and once you are a non-smoker for 1 year, you can get non-smoker rates with some companies. Let an independent life insurance broker shop around and determine which company will offer you insurance at the best possible rate.