00:00So in your piece you start out by talking about this guy who'd booked tickets to Saudi for a conference
00:05and he knew that it was like kind of risky so he bought the flight company's travel insurance right and
00:12then he figured he would be good because he got a non-refundable ticket but he bought the flight insurance
00:15and then he said sorry we don't cover war and he was on the hook for it. Is that I
00:20mean is flight insurance worth it in times of uncertainty and conflict what does it cover what doesn't it cover.
00:25That is an excellent question and it's a question a lot of people are asking these days. As you pointed
00:32out things have been really messy on the travel front and the anecdote you're talking about was yes exactly that.
00:38A professor was going to Saudi for a workshop and he bought the travel insurance that came that was offered
00:46with his flight and it said it would protect his trip and he looked at the fine print or at
00:52least he skimmed through the fine print and he thought gosh this covers a lot of stuff so I am
00:58good.
00:58And his trip was derailed and his trip was derailed by the military action in the Middle East and he
01:03discovered that he was in fact not covered.
01:06That's happening a lot these days unfortunately and if I had one piece of advice for travelers and it's such
01:13a drag but it is so important read the fine print and really understand what it is you are getting
01:21when you buy travel insurance.
01:22You have been reading the fine print and I'm curious just generally speaking what travel insurance does cover is it
01:29natural disasters is it delays one might encounter if there is maybe not full staffing at the airport what will
01:36travel insurance get me if I if I do in fact get get it for a flight.
01:40Great question so here are some of the things that travel insurance is great for let's say you get sick
01:47before a trip let's say you get sick on a trip let's say that your flight is delayed for say
01:56overnight and you need a place to stay let's say your luggage gets lost let's say your flight gets canceled
02:04and you now need a way to get to your cruise departure point.
02:08Those are things that travel insurance is really really good at covering here are some of the things that travel
02:15insurance is not good at covering if say there is an invasion of the country where you are visiting you
02:24are going to be out of luck.
02:26Or let's say that your flight your flights as happened to so many people this year let's say that your
02:33flights are completely canceled you have no way out of a nearby location because of a war or a military
02:39action you are also going to be what about if your airline goes out of business.
02:44Oh good question yeah that's a great question super relevant right now if your airline goes out of business yes
02:50generally you are going to be covered and you need to look for that particular clause in your travel insurance
02:56because every insurance policy is a little bit different.
03:00But you want to you want to you want to look for the clause that says that if your travel
03:05company goes out of business or stops operating for financial reasons that you will be covered because of course if
03:12the company goes out of business often they are not going to be giving your money back.
03:16There is something called cancel for any reason insurance more expensive more all encompassing what do I get for that
03:23if I pony up the the extra money for it the extra money so cancel for any reason insurance you'll
03:30also see that called CFAR the funny thing is that's what people often think they're buying when they buy travel
03:37insurance but it's not cancel for any reason insurance means that if you get nervous about your trip you can
03:45cancel it.
03:46If your kid gets into the championships and you don't want to miss their game and you want to cancel
03:51your trip you can that said there are a lot of catches that go along with cancel for any reason
03:57insurance CFAR one is as you pointed out it's expensive it can cost up to about 18 percent of your
04:05cost of your trip to it's not interruption for any reason insurance it's not almost got
04:12to the end of my trip to the end of my trip to the end of my trip to the
04:13end of my trip and decided to go home early insurance it is cancel for any reason insurance so it
04:17has to be activated before you go on the trip all right what about something like hantavirus something we're hearing
04:25a lot about right now global pandemics plagues viruses nor a virus are those kinds of things track covered with
04:33regular travel insurance.
04:34You know it's really going to depend on the individual circumstances so one thing that I personally recommend is somebody
04:44who travels a lot is to have medical evacuation insurance that you can also add crisis insurance to.
04:53These are companies I call them insurance they don't like being called insurance they're they're technically membership organizations and they
05:02can cost a few to several hundred dollars a year.
05:04And what you get is assurance that if something happens an emergency where you need to get home and you're
05:14in you're at least 150 miles away from home that they will take care of that.
05:20So COVID or something like COVID where a country gets shut down or there's a political unrest or there's a
05:30terrorist attack or you fall and break your leg really badly and you can't get the treatment you need where
05:36you are.
05:37Those are the services that I would use to make sure that I can get home.
05:41Those kinds of expenses can also be very very costly.
05:46I talked to for a while ago I talked to somebody who was on the medical team at Burning Man
05:53and he said that if you need to get evacuated from Burning Man it can cost you tens of thousands
05:58of dollars.
05:59So in that case it feels like it's really worth it to pay a few hundred dollars to be covered
06:03for a year.
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