Avoid Paying Higher Costs with Life Insurance due to Smoking/Tobacco
So you need life insurance, but you are a tobacco user. Well, unfortunately if you use tobacco its typically double if not more the cost of a traditional person for the life insurance. So if you smoke or chew tobacco do you have to commit to paying the costly expense to the right thing on getting life insurance for your family? Well, read on.
Instructions
1. First thing to think about here. IF YOU LIE ON LIFE INSURANCE THEY CAN DENY YOUR CLAIM! Do not forget this point. I am not condoning anything here other than telling you how the system works.
2. If you smoke or chew tobacco obviously this is not good for you, but moral judgements aside its not good for your insurance rates. Your body consumes and processes all things in its own time. All things like tobacco have what is called a "half-life". When you use tobacco products it enters and exits your system fairly quickly, however it does produce something that is called cotinine. Cotinine will stay in your system much longer than the nicotine itself. It is this that life insurance companies look for when testing you for nicotine.
3. Now typically life insurance companies will test your urine for evidence of cotinine. If it is present then you will be rated as a smoker, and be stuck in high premium hell. But the good news is that cotinine will exit the systems like most everything else. There is no set rule as to how long it will take, only estimates. It will depend on some different factors. Such as, how long have you been using tobacco? How big of a person are you? How frequent of a user are you?
4. So let me tell you an example of a case that I know of involving a 36 year old male, 180lbs, habitual user for the last 20 years. After stopping for 30 days he got tested. It was a urine test and the results found him as a non-nicotine user. He therefore was given the rates as such. He just saved himself a whole bunch of money over the next multiple years due to this experiament. Now the obvious question. Didn't he lie on his life application and wouldn't that nullify the payout?
5. The answer to that question is absolutely. However, he is planning on quitting. and he willing to take the risk. One thing to consider in his risk taking is that there is something caled guaranteed insurability. Once insured the life insurance company will not take the policy from you. What I mean to say is that if you got life insurance one day and 5 years later was diagnosed with cancer, the company couldn't just take your life insurance away. So who is to say that when you started the life insurance you didn't use tobacco, and after at some point you began using.
6. So let me reiterate this because it is important. IF YOU LIE TO THE INSURANCE COMPANY THEY CAN DENY YOUR CLAIM. So do and make your decisions at your own risk. If you remember my example in my other article of a 35 year old in good health paying $55 a month for 20 year 1 million dollar term life insurance policy. That same person as a smoker would pay roughly $348 a month. There's something to chew on...instead of your nicorette gum.
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