You can still get life insurance even if you smoke a pipe, and you may be able to qualify for great non-smoker rates. Pipe smoking is different than smoking a cigarette and the life insurance industry takes this into consideration. Many people smoke a pipe as a leisure activity and oftentimes do not inhale, which makes it “safer” than cigarette smoking and some insurance companies rate accordingly.
When you apply for life insurance, you will want to be completely honest about any tobacco use whether you are an everyday cigarette smoker or just smoke a pipe for 30 minutes at the end of a work week. If it turns out that you lied about tobacco use on an application, the life insurance company can penalize you by reducing your death benefit to what your premiums would be paying for on a smoker-rated policy.
You lied on your application saying you never used any tobacco product and were offered a 20-year $1,000,000 term policy for $53 a month. During the two-year contestability period, the insurance company discovered you actually are a daily pipe cigar smoker. Your policy suddenly drops down to a $175,000 death benefit instead of $1,000,000 because that’s what the $53/month smoker-rate would cover.
If it is discovered after you die that you misrepresented yourself, the carrier can dispute part or all of the benefit your beneficiaries were to receive upon your death. It does not pay to try and fool the insurance company.
Some life insurance companies recognize that smoking a pipe does not carry the same health risks as other tobacco use and will rate applicants as non-smokers no matter how often you smoke a pipe. Other life insurance companies will give you non-smoker rates if you pipe smoke only as long as no nicotine is detected in your urine test, which means you aren’t a daily smoker since cotinine usually takes 1-3 days to leave your system. And then there are the life insurance companies that will automatically give you smoker rates if you smoke a pipe.
Quotacy works with many insurance companies and we will shop your case at those carriers whom are more lenient with pipe smokers. No matter what tobacco product you use, plan ahead for your loved ones. No one ever anticipates needing to use life insurance, but the unexpected happens. Be prepared and get a free and anonymous term life insurance quote today.
Photo credit to: State Library Victoria Collections
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Looking for 100,000 policy
Hi Richard,
I assume you are a pipe smoker since you commented here?
If so, the go-to carriers for a $100K life insurance policy for a pipe smoker are going to be Prudential and Lincoln Financial. They both currently consider pipe smokers to be “non-smokers”. For pricing, please go run a quote and be sure to say you are a pipe smoker under the “Tobacco Usage” section. The quoting tool will then factor that into your pricing estimates. Some carriers will give you a smoker rate, though the carriers I mentioned prior will not and will have much better rates than any other carrier in the market.
Feel free to contact us if you have any more questions.