The Ultimate Guide to Travel Insurance for Complex Times

0:00 So in your piece, you start out by talking about

0:02 this guy who'd booked tickets to Saudi for a conference,

0:05 and he knew that it was, like, kind of risky.

0:07 So he bought the flight company's travel insurance.

0:10 Right?

0:10 And then he figured he would be good because he got a nonaffordable ticket,

0:14 but he bought the flight insurance.

0:15 And then he said, sorry.

0:16 We don't cover war, and he was on the hook for it.

0:19 Is that I mean, is flight insurance

0:21 worth it in times of uncertainty and conflict?

0:22 What does it cover?

0:23 What doesn't it cover?

0:26 That is an excellent question,

0:27 and it's a question a lot of people are asking these days.

0:30 As you pointed out, things have been really messy on the travel front.

0:35 And the anecdote you're talking about was, yes, exactly that.

0:38 A professor was going to Saudi for a workshop,

0:42 and he bought the travel insurance that came that was offered with his flight.

0:47 And it said it would protect his trip.

0:49 And he looked at the fine print or at least he skimmed through the fine print,

0:54 and he thought, gosh.

0:55 This covers a lot of stuff, so I am good.

0:58 And his trip was derailed by the military action in The Middle East,

1:03 and he discovered that he was in fact not covered.

1:06 That's happening a lot these days, unfortunately.

1:09 And if I had one piece of advice for travelers,

1:12 and it's such a drag, but it is so important,

1:16 read the fine print and really understand what it

1:20 is you are getting when you buy travel insurance.

1:23 You have been reading the fine print,

1:25 and I'm curious just generally speaking what travel insurance does cover.

1:29 Is it natural disasters?

1:30 Is it delays one might encounter if there

1:34 is maybe not full staffing at the airport?

1:36 What will travel insurance get me if I if I do in fact get get it for a flight?

1:41 Great question.

1:41 So here are some of the things that travel insurance is great for.

1:45 Let's say you get sick before a trip.

1:48 Let's say you get sick on a trip.

1:50 Mhmm.

1:50 Let's say that your flight is delayed for, say,

1:55 overnight, and you need a place to stay.

1:59 Let's say your luggage gets lost.

2:02 Let's say your flight gets canceled,

2:04 and you now need a way to get to your cruise departure point.

2:09 Those are things that travel insurance is really, really good at covering.

2:13 Here's some of the things that travel insurance is not good at covering.

2:17 If, say, there is an invasion of the country where you were visiting,

2:24 you are going to be out of luck.

2:27 Or let's say that your flight your flights

2:30 as happened to so many people this year,

2:32 let's say that your flights are completely canceled.

2:34 You have no way out of a nearby location because of a war or a military action.

2:39 You are also going to be What about if your airline goes out of business?

2:44 Oh, good question.

2:45 Yeah.

2:45 That's a great question.

2:46 Super relevant right now.

2:48 If your airline goes out of business, yes.

2:50 Generally, you are going to be covered.

2:52 Okay.

2:52 And you need to look for that particular clause in your travel

2:56 insurance because every insurance policy is a little bit different.

3:00 But you want to, you want to look for the clause that says

3:04 that if your travel company goes out

3:06 of business or stops operating for financial reasons, that you will be covered.

3:11 Because, of course, if the company goes out of business,

3:13 often they are not going to be giving your money back.

3:16 There is something called cancel for any reason insurance.

3:20 More expensive, more all encompassing.

3:22 What what do I get for that if I pony up the the extra money for it?

3:26 The extra money.

3:27 So cancel for any reason insurance, you'll also see that called CFAR.

3:32 The funny thing is that's what people often think

3:35 they're buying when they buy travel insurance, but it's not.

3:39 Cancel for any reason insurance means that if you

3:42 get nervous about your trip, you can cancel it.

3:46 If your kid gets into the championships and you don't wanna

3:50 miss their game and you wanna cancel your trip, you can.

3:53 That said, there are a lot of catches

3:55 that go along with cancel for any reason insurance, CFAR.

3:58 One is, as you pointed out, it's expensive.

4:01 It can cost up to about 18 percent of your the cost of your trip.

4:07 Two, it's not interruption for any reason insurance.

4:10 It's not, almost got to the end

4:12 of my trip and decided to go home early insurance.

4:15 It is canceled for any reason insurance,

4:17 so it has to be activated before you go on the trip.

4:21 Alright.

4:22 What about something like antivirus,

4:24 something we're hearing a lot about right now?

4:28 Global pandemics, plagues, viruses, norovirus,

4:30 are those kinds of things covered, with regular travel insurance?

4:35 You know, it's really going to depend on the individual circumstances.

4:40 So one thing that I personally recommend is somebody who travels a lot is

4:46 to have medical evacuation insurance that that you

4:49 can also add crisis insurance to.

4:52 These are companies I call them insurance.

4:56 They don't like being called insurance.

4:58 They're they're technically membership organizations,

5:00 and they can cost a few to several $100 a year.

5:05 And what you get is assurance that if something happens,

5:10 an emergency where you need to get home and you're

5:14 in you're at least a 150 miles away from home, that they will take care of that.

5:21 So COVID, or something like COVID where,

5:25 a country gets shut down or there's a political

5:28 unrest or there's a terrorist attack or you

5:32 fall and break your leg really badly and you

5:34 can't get the treatment you need where you are.

5:36 Those are the services that I would use to make sure that I can get home.

5:41 Those kinds of expenses can also be very, very costly.

5:46 I talked to for a while ago,

5:49 I talked to somebody who was on the medical team at Burning Man,

5:53 and he said that if you need to get evacuated from Burning Man,

5:56 it can cost you tens of thousands of dollars.

5:59 So in that case, it feels like it's really worth it

6:02 to pay a few $100 to be covered for a year.