No secret that smoking is bad for your health. That said, it’s also pretty obvious that it’s pretty bad for your wealth, as pound coins are ploughed into another 20 pack. Just 10 a day will cost you over £750 a year, which is more than £33,000 in a working lifetime. If you smoke 20 a day you’ll be splashing out £1375 a year – just think of what you could have instead! However, you’re not just keeping newsagents in business, there’s also a further cost to smokers on a range of financial products. Martin Lewis from the Moneysavingexpert.com says that the hidden cost of this could be £37,000 over 20 years, meaning the cost of your habit could total to something like £50000 - £60000. You could pay off a huge section of your mortgage with that!

Smokers are more likely to have serious illness or, worse still, die, so there’s far more risk involved when offering them various types of insurance. On health insurance, some companies will offer non smokers a better price than smokers. However, many actually don’t, but if a smoker is seen to have a serious risk of illness, then they may not even get a quote. The reason why there is little differential between the quotes is because health insurance runs on a month by month basis, whereas smokers are more likely to have problems in the long term.

Life insurance is where smokers are most likely to be quoted higher costs, because policies are taken out over the long term. In basic terms smokers will certainly pay more, but to find out how much we took variations on quotes for life insurance on ASDA Finance’s website, which claims to have the cheapest available quotes. Prices have a wide variation depending on age, but also if you tick the ‘yes’ box to the question ‘have you used tobacco products over the last 12 months.’
Policy was as follows: Lowest price quoted for £200000 of life cover for a smoker over 25 years with critical illness cover included on a single basis.

22 year old male

40 year old male

It’s clear then that you can make huge savings on your life insurance if you quit. However, make sure you’ve quit for at least a year. If you’ve been a twenty a day smoker in the past, but now not touched cigarettes for two years, then you’re probably in a better circumstance than someone who socially smokes. The problem for one or two a day smokers is that if they say they are a non smoker on their policy, yet contract a smoking relating illness, then their policy could be declared void, or even fraudulent. On the other hand, it could be important for a former heavy smoker to give evidence that they have stopped, possibly through a doctor or counsellor’s note. Don’t lie on your life insurance policy, the only way to get the best deal is to quit and avoid cigarettes altogether.