The turning point for me came when I had to fill out a health insurance application about four years ago.

Nonsmokers got better rates, therefore I became a nonsmoker.

And if I had it there, in a contract, I was going to stick to it.

Somehow the cost per pack didn’t faze me as much as the increased cost of my health insurance.

So I understand the problem. Many smokers — especially young smokers — feel fine and enjoy smoking. They can quit any time they want to. The near-certainty of future health consequences loses out to the immediate gratification of taking a drag. And the ones that don’t feel fine figure it’s too late to quit anyway.

I was in the same trap. I’d quit later, I just didn’t feel like it yet. It wasn’t until I was going to get hit with an immediate consequence that I decided to finally and permanently quit.

So just in case you need another reason to quit, I’ve got some numbers to throw at you.

And I want you to weigh those numbers against the price of protecting your family.

The first number is the obvious one. How much are you paying for cigarettes?

Missouri is one of the cheapest states to buy smokes and it’s still $5 a pack.

At half a pack a day, that’s $75 a month.

I can get most folks — even smokers — a pretty good life insurance policy for $75 a month.

Yes, I’m going to turn this into a pitch for life insurance. Protecting your family is the most important job I have. Life insurance is how I do that.

If you’re smoking a pack a day, that’s $150 a month. Depending on how old you are, we can get you an amazing policy for $150 a month. The kind that helps pay for things while you’re still alive.

Just for fun, here are some more numbers. This is how much it would cost to start a $250,000 10-year term life insurance policy for a woman throughout her lifetime, assuming she’s in average health. (BTW, I sell life insurance through Farmers, so those are the numbers I’m using here.)

A smoker is paying almost double the rate of the nonsmoker.

Why? Because she’s almost twice as likely to use the life insurance (the technical term here is “dying”).

And as she gets older, the smoking woman is more likely to develop health issues that make it harder to get life insurance.

I had a couple in my office earlier this week tell me that protecting their family was less important than their nicotine fix.

No, they didn’t actually say that. They said they couldn’t afford life insurance, but they were spending about $60 a week on cigarettes.

$60 a week? Did I hear that right?

Both the husband and wife smoke, so that’s a little less than a pack a day for each.

And no, I don’t want you to wait until you quit smoking to get life insurance. Remember, the noxious weed makes it almost twice as likely that you’re going to die, so you really do need it now.

I want you to get life insurance and quit smoking. Pay for the life insurance with the money you’d set aside for cigarettes. Once you’ve quit for a year. Really and truly quit, call me again. We can send in a nicotine questionnaire and it will reduce your life insurance premium.

Then you have life insurance and money in your pocket.

And yes, I know it’s not easy to quit smoking. Even four years later, I still have cravings — I used to be a newspaper reporter and editor. A cigarette was my excuse to to go outside and gather my thoughts before I wrote or edited. So, of course, the cravings are worse when I’m writing. (Now, for instance.)

But it’s possible.