If you are looking for ways in which you can save money on your life insurance plan or your health insurance plan, you can start off by helping yourself in a great manner. How you ask? Well, all you have to do is quit smoking. Did you know that smokers had to pay a much higher premium for the insurance policies as compared to non-smokers? This is because the health risks increase when you smoke n automatically that pushes up your insurance premium as well. So rather than looking for insurance cheats, take the healthy route and stub out the smoke from your life.
The effect of smoking on life insurance premium
Life insurance is a guarantee that promises to pay a sum assured to your nominees if you die. However, insurance companies do not expect all their customers to die! If that happened, the insurer would run into losses! As a result, they classify the smokers as high risk customers who are more susceptible to illnesses such as breathing problems, lung ailments, increased chance of heart attack and most commonly, cancer that lead to death. Therefore the insurance providers ask smokers to pay a higher amount as the premium just to ensure that if a sum assured needs to be paid out, their losses would be lesser.
The same logic applies for a health plan as well. The insurer considers a smoker to be more likely to fall ill and thereby require hospitalization or other medical care more frequently than a non-smoker.
Quit smoking to reduce the insurance premium
First and foremost you have to assure the insurance provider that you have given up smoking for good. For this, you have to be a non-smoker for a period of 12 months, i.e. not smoke a single cigarette in one whole year. Once that is done, your insurance premium can come down by as much as 55% (subject to rates of insurance company, your overall health condition, etc).
Dangers of lying about smoking habits
An insurance company does not classify between chain smokers and social smokers. Even if you smoke one cigarette a week, you’d be considered a smoker. So be very careful while mentioning your habits in the proposal or renewal form. If you lie in your form and state that you are a non-smoker when you clearly are a smoker, you or your nominees will face massive problems at the time of a claim. The incorrect declaration of smoking habits is one of the top most reasons why claims get refused. So be honest or else, if you really want a lowered premium, kick the butt!
Going tobacco free
So as we can see, saying goodbye to the cigarettes can do your health and your wealth a whole lot of good. And if you have been a non-smoker for a year, then make sure you inform your insurance company about it and get your premium reduced. Take a small healthy step today and walk away with a fatter wallet!
Read Also: 5 Ds to start you on the path to quit smoking
Credit: Deepak Yohannan
The author is the CEO of MyInsuranceClub.com, an online insurance price & features comparison portal.
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