Summary

Can smoking affect your cheap life insurance premiums as well as your health? It can certainly affect your insurance premiums, as we explain here.

Life insurance - the rates that will get your wallet smoking, too!

Author: Catriona Singfield

Everyone has heard of the high risks of smoking. High blood pressure,

Life Insurance. Top Tips for Buying Online
Buying life insurance online is easy but this article provides 5 money saving tips that the man in the street would otherwise be unaware of. Essential reading.
Life Insurance. Why There's No Need to be a Desperate Housewife
This article highlights some of the mistakes people make when buying life insurance and draws to your attention the attraction of family income benefit insurance, a form of life insurance to provide income for families.
Critical illness Insurance. Insurers under fire
Critical Illness insurers are receiving some bad press. This article looks the reasons and comments.
Life Insurers use the Body Mass Index to tighten the belt on fat people
If youre fat the life insurance companies will load your premium by up to 400%. But how do they decide who is overweight? This article explains.
Life Insurance Take a last gasp and count the savings!
If you gave up smoking at least a year ago, this article will help you save lots of money on your life insurance. Essential reading.
Life Insurance – Outweighing The Benefits?
Insurance companies need to know if you're overweight. Here's a question you can't avoid!
heart attacks, lung cancer - these are just a few of the conditions associated with an addiction to nicotine. It's a sobering thought that only 50% of smokers will live to be over 70, while 80% of non-smokers will enjoy an old age well past that figure. Add to that the fact that many smoking-related diseases cause great suffering, and the picture becomes very sombre indeed.

Smoking causes financial pain too - at over £5 for a packet of 20, you may as well roll up that fiver and set fire to it. And as if this weren't enough, there are longer term, less obvious costs - the hundreds of pounds smokers are charged on life insurance.

The definition used by insurance companies for 'a smoker' includes anyone who has used tobacco products in the last twelve months. According to industry statistics, smoker are more likely to claim on their insurance, so their premiums are correspondingly higher - but the actual amount may be an unpleasant surprise.

By way of example, two smokers aged 35, a man and a woman, can expect to pay 78% and 72% more respectively. Paying for cover worth £100,000 over 20 years, our two nicotine fiends will be charged an extra £1,500 or more. When you factor in the cost of the cigarettes themselves, that's a whopping £36,400 up in ashes! Smoking is certainly a costly way to go .

You might be tempted not to declare yourself as a smoker to avoid the premium hike, but beware! There are ways to check that everything is as it seems, even ways to analyse a client's saliva to check for signs of smoking. You may be asked to take a saliva test before committing to a policy. If you do take one on and you need to claim, the insurer will be very likely to find out - they would then be able to reject your claim, leaving you in the same position as someone who wasn't insured, but having paid money out too. Certainly not a good way to try to save!

However, if a smoker does manage to give up, there is good news ahead. After a twelve-month clearing period, the new non-smoker can benefit from decreased insurance premiums as well. As always, there may be a better deal to be found on the Internet, so shop around and make sure of getting the best deal out there. Without smoking affecting the premiums, some very attractive rates become available.

Click here for page 2

Did you Know?
Whilst 60% of home buyers carry out research on the Internet for their mortgage quotations, only a small fraction of them actually arrange their mortgage online. That's because with something as big and important as a mortgage, they like to discuss it with an expert. So use the Internet to become more "mortgage savvy" and then get a mortgage consultant to phone you back to ensure you make the right decision.

Did you know?
Recent research has shown that 53% of motor insurance is now bought online. That's because surfing is a sure fire way of tracking down the best deals. And at renewal time, surf around again! Don't automatically accept your renewal notice without rechecking premiums on the Internet.

Did you Know?
According to Experian the largest UK credit agency, 53% of loan applications are refused. So if your credit history is imperfect, apply for bad credit loans through a loan Broker. The Broker will consider your credit history and apply to the lender most likely to favourably look at your application. That way you get your loan with the minimum fuss and at the best rate available to you.