Cigarettes are expensive, but your insurance as a smoker is also thousands of euros higher

Quitting smoking saves you a lot of money, everyone knows that. What not everyone knows is that many ex-smokers can save up to thousands of euros extra on their term life insurance (ORV). If you stop smoking, your premium will drop significantly. But you do have to tell your insurer yourself that you have stopped. And not every ex-smoker seems to do that.

In 2007, Tina (45) and Marcel (41) van Wezel bought a house in Amsterdam. With the mortgage, they took out a term life insurance policy together, with a term of 30 years. If one of the two dies before 2037, the other will receive two hundred thousand euros.

Life insurance

When they took out the life insurance policy, they had to declare whether they smoked. They both did. As a result, the insurer charged a relatively high joint monthly premium of 57 euros. “We often smoked a pack a day. That started to gnaw more and more, because you know it will make you sick,” says Tina. “That’s why we stopped at the same time in 2011. Where to buy e cigarettes online? And suddenly we started to have money left over.”

The couple decided to save that money for fun trips. Tina: ,,For ten years we have been putting aside the cost of one pack of cigarettes every day. It became a sport: if the cigarette price goes up, we put a higher amount aside. Because we can’t travel because of corona, there is already almost 3000 euros in our travel pot.” When asked whether they, as ex-smokers, requested a lower premium on their term life insurance, Tina exclaims: “No, how stupid, we never thought of that.”

Lower premium after not smoking for two years

Comparison site Independer has been pointing out to ex-smokers for years that you should report smoking cessation to your ORV insurer. Guido Rodenburg of Independer: ,,Smoking weighs heavily in the amount of your premium. And so stop too.”

Tina and Marcel

Because smokers die at a younger age on average, they also die more often within the ORV term than non-smokers. The insurer therefore has to pay out more often for smokers, hence the higher premium. But if you have stopped for two years, the insurer sees you as an ex-smoker. From that moment on you also have to pay less premium. Sometimes only half of your old ‘smoking premium’. “But you have to tell your insurer yourself that you have stopped,” says Rodenburg. “Only then will you be offered a lower premium.”

According to Independer, few ex-smokers know about the lower premium. “Situations like those of Tina and Marcel are common”, explains Rodenburg. “One phone call to the insurer probably saved this couple thousands of euros from 2013, that money has now evaporated.”

Switching to another insurance is often even cheaper

If you can adjust your term life insurance to ‘non-smoker’, it is wise to immediately check whether your own insurer still offers the lowest premium. Rodenburg: ,,You often see that another ORV turns out to be even cheaper. You can sometimes save double with a switch.”

Lowest premium

Independer calculated what Tina and Marcel can still save by transferring their ORV to an insurer that offers them – as ex-smokers – the lowest premium. Rodenburg: ,,In their current situation, they pay 57 euros per month for another 16 years (the rest of the original term). That is a total of 10,944 euros. But if they switch, the cheapest alternative will only cost them 27.13 euros per month. That is still 5,209 euros for the remainder of the term. E liquids mr-joy.co.ukis cheap. This saves them 358 euros annually. Over the remainder of the 16-year term, that amounts to a total of 5,728 euros, without having to compromise on the insured amount.” Look here for more savings examples from Independer, from various ex-smokers on the term life insurance.

Now that they know they can save even more, Tina and Marcel will be looking for a new term life insurance policy this month. Tina: ,,The difference in premium also goes to our holiday pot. That way we still have money left over for the Maldives.”

How much money do you save by not buying cigarettes anymore?

The overview of cigarette-prize.nl shows that in many cases a pack of 20 cigarettes costs 8 euros. That means that the price of one cigarette is 40 cents. Someone who smoked 10 cigarettes a day saves 28 euros a week by quitting. That is a saving of 112 euros per month and 1,424 euros per year.