For all of you that have applied for life insurance and smoke cigars, and didn’t use the right company and agent, you’ve felt the sting of smoker rates. In general, cigarette smokers will spend 2-3 times what a non smoker will spend on life insurance given everything else being equal.

I’ll try not to get on my soapbox too much about how it should be obvious why that’s the case with cigarette smoking. With links to just about every malady known to mankind, an insurance company would be crazy not to figure that into their mortality assumptions and rates. The best you can do as a smoker is to find an independent agent that has access to the best rates available. Right now, in most cases, that would be with Liberty Life and Western Reserve Life.

If you happen use tobacco in some other form such as cigars or chew, and run into an agent that doesn’t know any better, they will probably just quote whatever smoker rate they can find and hope you buy it because, well….because you’re a tobacco user and that means more premium and more commission.

A good indpendent agent on the other hand is going to know that with Prudential you can get non smoker, non tobacco user rates even if you smoke cigars or chew all day long and test positive for nicotine on your exam.

Bottom line. Cutting your rates in half by finding an agent who knows where to take your business and where not to makes sense somehow……unless you want to spend too much money.