One of the biggest factors in living a health lifestyle is whether or not you are a smoker. If you are a smoker, you could pay a high price to be insured. MSN.com stated that some companies charge smokers more for health insurance premiums hoping to inspire employers to drop the nasty habit. But it isn’t just health insurance coverage costs smokers will have to face. Over their lifetime, smokers will find they spend more on home and life insurance as well.
If this is not enough to make you second guess lighting up, see if these facts will make you put down the cancer stick:
- The habit costs. A lot. The actual cost of the habit for a regular smoker is $1,700 a year, based on paying $4.50 per pack. And this is a low estimate. Instead the money could be used for a vacation, to pay off debt or put into savings.
- It takes a toll on your body. Smoking weakens your bronchi and lungs, and increases the risk of heart disease, not to mention sky rocketing your chances of getting emphysema and a whole host of cancers. Smoking effects almost every organ of your body. Some studies show that 40% of smoking men will not live to see retirement.
- You might not even get hired. States are finding even more ways to discourage smokers. A college in Michigan won’t hire smokers as full-time employees and Utah recently enacted a higher tobacco tax. And their claims are supported by a new study that says smokers waste their employers an additional hour on average each work day for smoke breaks. This waste of time, in addition to fierce non-smoking campaigns, has employers thinking twice about hiring a smoker.
- For a smoker, smoking in your car or home may seem normal. However, when smokers want to turn around a sell their investments, they will run into some serious problems. When trading in a higher-end vehicle, trade-ins can be docked more than $1,000 off the price. It is exponentially more when trying to sell a home. Home-selling smokers will also have to front the bill for carpet cleanings and a new paint job to even start to get the smell out of a home. Some Realtors say most home buyers won’t even look at a smoker’s former home.
- It makes you ugly. Wrinkles and off-colored fingers are only part of it. Smoking gives you bad breath. But the bad breath is only the beginning of what trouble smoking is reeking on the inside of your mouth. Smoking stains teeth so yellow that the stains sometimes can’t even be bleached out. And smokers have 3 times more cavities than non-smokers.
With an increasing trend for employers to make their smoking employees pay more for health insurance, it pays to quit smoking. And if you are not a smoker, don’t start. The negative consequences of smoking surely don’t outweigh the “positives.”