Stop Smoking The no-buts MoneySaving guide

It's a fact that as well as being extremely damaging to your health, smoking is also extremely damaging to your wealth!

You could easily save £30,000 not just on the cigarettes but on common financial products too. This is the no-buts guide to giving up on the cheap.

The Direct Costs

Here's the simple rule of thumb to work out roughly how much you spend on cigarettes at current prices:

Average number of cigarettes smoked per day

x £120

= Annual Cost

1 cigarette a day is £120
10 cigarettes a day is 1,200
A packet a day is £2,400

Think what you could be spending this on!

Use the Demotivator to see how much your habit is costing you! (Why not take a look at the Travel MoneySaving section to see what you're missing?).

The Hidden Costs

The MoneySaving gain from smoking isn't just about the reduced outlay in newsagents. There's a further, hefty cost to smoking; many financial products add a huge whack on smokers... and there's a very simple reason.

So what's the additional cost?

Smoking impacts any product where the process depends on the likelihood of illness or death. Common medical opinion is that the benefits of exercising, eating well and losing weight pale into insignificant compared to the benefits of quitting smoking, as the risk from most smoking related illnesses decreases rapidly after quitting.

Let me put it another way...

Smokers are more likely to die or have serious illness. So products which pay out on death or illness are a lot more expensive!

So, quit smoking and you'll save money a mass of products.

The hidden cost could be over as £30,000 over 20 years!

We've calculated the real cost of smoking, by looking at the increased amount smokers have to pay on standard financial products. If you had term assurance, critical illness, private medical insurance, permanent health insurance then typically you'd pay over £30,000 more on them as a smoker over 20 years than a non-smoker.

However, you should never withhold the information that you're an ex-smoker, as this could potentially invalidate your insurance. Here's a product by product breakdown...

Term Life Assurance

Approximate non smoker saving 55%

There are two main types of term assurance, one that covers your mortgage and one that is designed to pay out a lump sum to protect your family's finances in case you die. Both only pay out if you die within a fixed term and as such, costs increase the more likely you are to die within the set period of your policy.

However it's worth noting, whether you smoke or not, most people are paying substantially more than needed on their term insurance; and it's very easy to slash the cost.

Full Info: Life Insurance and Mortgage Life Insurance

Critical Illness Insurance

Approximate non smoker saving 50%

This pays out a lump sum if you're diagnosed with one of a pre-defined list of critical illnesses and has a high smoking price difference. The increased cost also reflects the fact that the payment is all in one big lump sum.

At this point it's worth me saying that if you have Critical Illness Insurance as well as Term Life Insurance you can get a much cheaper policy if you combine the two, with prices being around 25% for both smokers and non smokers.

Full Info: In general we're not really fans of critical illness policies but you'll find some detail in the Life Insurance and Mortgage Life Insurance

Private Medical Insurance

Approximate non smoker saving 5%

This provides medical treatment and hospital accommodation and while most polices cost the same for smokers and non smokers, some do cost more.

Providers usually make a detailed analysis of your health, even if only via a phone questionnaire, so smoking related issues are taken into account in their own right, leaving the actual fact that you smoke as a side issue and hiding the real cost.

Full info: Private Medical Insurance

Permanent Health Insurance

Approximate non smoker saving 25%

This is often called an income replacement plan as it pays out a proportion of your salary if you're incapable of working after a set amount of time. The payments stop once you return to work.

If you smoke once in a year, you're a smoker, so while you may not be spending on cigarettes you are costing yourself massively on financial product.

Most polices rely on your honesty when it comes to declaring whether you smoke and lying is easy but can be disastrous, so if you're thinking of lying about smoking, don't! If you get a smoking related illness it can invalidate all claims, not just smoking claims, and it is potentially fraudulent.

If medical or other evidence of your habit is discovered, your provider can, and probably will, legitimately refuse to pay out and not even refund your premiums. Even people who have mostly, but not completely, stopped smoking may be detected and lose out this way.

The one time smoking pays

The one time smoking does help you is at retirement when you trade your pension savings in for an Annuity. This is a payment per year for the rest of your life, and as smoking shortens that, you get a better rate.Yet unsurprisingly, you don't get the benefit after one quick drag, in this case you need to have been smoking for ten years to count.

Now I wouldn't suggest to anyone this is a reason to take up smoking, after all you only get more as you're likely to die sooner.Yet if you are a smoker about to retire, you may just want to wait until the day after getting your annuity to quit!

What to do when you've quit

If you quit smoking, always notify providers when you quit, and then do it again after you've been smoke free for a year. At this point if you have any of the policies listed in the hidden costs list, you should immediately go back and try and get them cheaper.

In fact the saving is so large, you should put a note in your diary to remind yourself the week before the year's anniversary, so you can go and get new quotes for all your policies (use the article links above to find the cheapest).

It's accepted that it's not easy to give up smoking but it's thought that around 70% of smokers actually want to quit. Worse still a whole industry has now built up around selling highly profitable stop smoking gear, patches, medicines and more. Yet it's possible get help, support and aid without spending too much cash.

Resources to help

The NHS

There is excellent free support available from the NHS, including its local Stop Smoking Services and the Together Programme. It also gives out a Quit Kit (includes info on quitting, a stress toy, mp3 support downloads and more).

Stop Smoking Clinics

These provide free local support from a trained adviser, either in groups or one to one and can also often supply free nicotine replacement products. Find your nearest.

The Together Programme

If you're unable to get to a Stop Smoking Clinic, the Together programme will help with text, e-mail or postal based motivational reminders.

To find out more about both services visit the smokefree website, speak to an advisor online or ask at your local GP practice, pharmacy or hospital. You can also call the NHS Smoking Helpline on the following numbers:

England 0800 022 4332
Scotland 0800 848 484
Wales 0300 1000 069
Northern Ireland 0800 858 585

Free or Cheap Nicotine Replacement Products

Getting stop smoking patches can be costly, they're typically around £10 a week to buy and tend to used for 10 weeks meaning a total outlay of around £100. Though of course it depends on your will-power, how effective you find them and how much you smoked. Luckily there are some easy ways to cut the cost.

• Stop Smoking Clinics. As detailed above there are special NHS clinics which may give patches and chewing gum out for free.

• By Prescription. If the clinic in your area does not provide free products you should be able to get them from your Doctor on prescription, which should work out a lot cheaper than buying in the shops.For someone that pays for their prescriptions (see Cheaper Prescriptions and Medications) you should be able to get an adequate supply for the £7.20 (until 1 Apr) prescription cost.

• Prescription prices without a prescription. It may not be necessary to go to your GP/local stop smoking clinic to get a prescription. Some higher level pharmacists in England are entitled to give some products, including nicotine patches, on prescription by themselves. It's worth popping in to your nearest chemist to see if they have a pharmacist who is able to do it.

• Buying them for less. The situation changes all the time, online pharmacies can be cheap for buying in bulk. If you find a good supply of legitimate products at a low cost please report them in the cheap nicotine replacement products forum discussion.

Free or cheap help, support, books and CDs

As well as products there are many good resources available online for free.

• Smoke-Free Wannabee. Many MoneySavers are trying to quit, or already have and they congregate to support each other and discuss the best low cost methods in the site's Forum. See the Give Up Smoking thread.

• Get the Allen Carr's Clinic course for 1/3 of the price. Allen Carr was one of the world's most famous stop smoking gurus. His course was recognised as a leading expert on stopping smoking, and has franchised out his course to various clinics across the country. Yet they're not cheap with a standard price of around £200. However use Tesco Clubcard vouchers and you can get it for 66% off. Tesco Allen Carr Details or read more about Loyalty Point Loopholes.

• Other Free Support Websites. As well as the official NHS Helpline, there are lots of other websites that offer support including Quit.org, Ash.org, Wequit and Quitnet.

• Other Freebies. As always the web is a great resource of info. One example is the ‘Stop Smoking - Break the Chains Ebook'. Report offers in the forum discussion if you spot any more.