hey there fellow travelers mark here with walter’s world today we’re on south beach in miami beach and i had a little incident and i’m actually wearing a boot on my right foot walking down ocean drive and it got me really thinking about travel insurance and what you need to know about travel insurance so what we have today are the don’ts of travel insurance and i think the first don’t we need to go through is realize that don’t think all travel insurance is the same okay because you can have medical travel insurance that will cover things like a broken foot or your wife getting hit in the eyeball with a piece of bamboo so she has to wear a patch over her eye for a few weeks or when your kid gets his hands smashed in a door in china and you end up in three different hospitals yes there’s the medical travel insurance but then there’s what we call trip insurance so with your trip insurance you’re covering things like oh i need to get money back for a canceled hotel or or i need to cancel my trip and how do i get my money back or something happened last minute i don’t want to lose out on my money or my baggage gets lost or my stuff gets stolen this is what trip insurance more covers and the thing is you can look on your homeowner’s insurance policy or your renter’s insurance policy and some things might be covered with that so again we’re going back to look at what is our coverage that we already have so that would kind of lead into don’t forget to talk to your insurance agent before you travel to see what’s available is to see what you’re already covered for all right so that can make it a lot easier a lot cheaper if you already know things are covered or not and just having that peace of mind of having the good news and the bad news about your insurance before you go also your insurance agent might be able to sell you some travel insurance or some medical travel insurance or trip insurance they might be able to do that for you the thing is there’s tons of opportunities online for travel insurance you can buy i mean heck after you buy your plane ticket a lot of airlines will offer you the opportunity to buy the travel insurance right then so just something to think about now my next stone for you when it comes to this travel medical insurance is don’t think that travel medical insurance works just like your health insurance back home because you know if your health insurance back home pays for your medicines or your prescriptions or it gives you money for over-the-counter drugs your travel medical insurance might not cover that so if you’re going to be traveling i do recommend you bring your prescription with you maybe ask your doctor hey could i get more so i have my prescription in case i have to stay an extra week or two when i’m abroad just to be safe but don’t expect that travel medical insurance to get you your medication when you’re abroad all right so that’s gonna be out of pocket now i know a lot of people just buy stuff for their credit card and they think hey my credit card has travel insurance i’ll just use that well my don’t for that is don’t think your credit card travel insurance will cover everything it will cover what you bought with the credit card so like i use my amex and so i use my amex you know for all my purchases but then one place says no we only take the visa card so i have to pay with visa that stuff i bought with that visa it’s not gonna be covered for my american express travel insurance but the thing is for a lot of people that credit card trip insurance travel insurance kind of stuff is sufficient for what you’re gonna do because it might just cover luggage and delayed flights so you don’t have to pay for that one night you missed in aruba okay so that’s something to think about now another don’t that really surprised a lot of people is when they buy trip insurance they don’t realize this not everything is covered by your trip insurance especially if you’re looking at electronics so the camera i’m using right now my phone my laptop kind of stuff it might not be covered you might need to get a separate policy just for that phone or just for your fancy camera you’re using okay and that could be a little frustrating like wait i got trip insurance that wasn’t covered no they cover your clothes and your luggage in your hotel but not the electronics okay so if you do have cameras like if you’re going for work and your photographer you got nice cameras you might want to look into additional policy that just focuses on your camera and that’s why it’s important to look at your homeowner’s insurance policy or your renter’s insurance policy because those might cover you while you’re abroad for your electronics so something to look at i know mine it’s covered so i’m not too worried about it but the thing is if my camera gets stolen or if i lose something or if i have issues one thing you got to remember is don’t think you can just file a claim without a police report look if your wallet gets stolen or your camera gets stolen or your bag gets taller it gets lost you’re going to need to have official verification that something happened for example jocelyn was in italy and she was shopping and someone picked her pocket and stole her stuff okay it happens it’s just the way it is but for us to get the insurance back we had to file a police report and the thing is as a tourist you have to realize if you’re a tourist area the cops know that tourists get robbed i mean that’s just the way it is and they have all the forms but you’ve got to go there and report it and fill out all those forms so expect to lose half a day or a full day of your vacation dealing with all the forms of stuff like that so do have a heads up and don’t come back home and then try to file the report later because that gets really really troublesome okay so make sure you get the official documentation now another thing i think is important for you to realize is don’t think travel insurance is insane expensive in general if you’re going to be budgeting out your trip think between three and eight percent of your total trip cost will be what your insurance should be so then for your kind of coverage so it’s not actually that expensive to get and some people feel that it’s not worth getting that’s up to you but just know it’s not going to bust your budget getting insurance to cover yourself in case anything goes wrong on your trip because if you have a medical emergency i mean those things can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars if you’re here in the u.s and maybe that you know 200 policy is worth it if you’re coming here to south beach and you’re going to break your foot so don’t forget that now my next stone for you is don’t think you can cancel your trip for just any old reason i mean there is trip cancellation you know insurance and the thing is there’s different types there’s trip cancellation because of a job loss or or you know something’s happening in that country they might let you do that but then there’s like no excuse trip cancellation insurance which costs more but it can literally be i don’t feel like going to spain today and they’ll give you your money back but i have to tell you um don’t expect to get all of your money back when you have trip insurance i usually say expect to get between 70 and 85 percent of your money back sometimes you get it all i mean with coven and stuff we ended up getting all of our money back but realize that sometimes there’s stipulations of what you can get back and what you can’t get back and the situations that happen and that’s why i think it’s important to don’t forget to read the fine print okay because travel insurance i mean it’s insurance it’s these long long things that you read through and you’ve got to make sure everything’s okay and everything you know cross the t’s and adopt the eyes and everything’s there and they have stipulations hey this is why we will pay you back this is why we won’t pay you back so it might say you have to have a job termination letter to get your money back for canceling a trip because you lost your job or they might need medical professionals to say look they had a heart attack and they cannot go right now they need to stay home these things might happen but also the fine print might say when it won’t be covered so if you do things they deem it’s not safe like if you’re gonna go bungee jumping or skydiving or or dangerous activities they may say hey that negates your policy okay so you really need to like look at that fine print because sometimes it might be hey we will give your money back for named hurricanes not tropical storms okay so something to kind of consider now another thing that people might get is what’s called emergency evacuation insurance so basically you’re in a country and there’s an insurrection or or you’re you’re in a place in a hurricane is coming or or you break your legs really bad you need to be evacuated back to the country that has better medical care these things do happen and the thing is is don’t think emergency evacuation isn’t worth it especially if you’re going to different parts of the world because you might need to get out as soon as you can and the thing is getting out of a country right away ask anybody that was trying to get back to the us or back to europe last minute in in 2020 they’re like oh those last minute tickets they’re insane expensive well emergency evacuation could cost you a hundred thousand dollars having that insurance just in case might be worth it but i gotta tell you with that emergency evacuation insurance don’t think it covers your medical care you’ll need travel medical insurance and the emergency you know evacuation insurance so something to think about i mean sometimes it’s together but again read that fine print now another thing i think is kind of important especially these days is don’t think you can go everywhere without travel insurance or some kind of insurance some countries are actually requiring travelers to have proof of insurance while they’re in their country okay so that could be something you need to think about in getting so you can actually get in the country right or stay in the country and sometimes it’s not about health insurance sometimes it’s car insurance and my next dome for you is don’t think that your car insurance policy back home will work abroad you need to see am i covered abroad am i covered for rental cars am i covered for rental cars when i’m abroad you need to look at these things because sometimes you’re not so you need to buy the the car insurance when you get to that country or when you rent the car okay that’s why some countries you’ll drive through and at the border they’ll have little huts there that are selling car insurance that you can buy for a week or 10 days or however long you’re there now my next kind of bad news don’t i have for you is don’t think that your travel insurance company will straight pay the bills a lot of times you will need to pay the bills and then they will pay you back later which can be quite expensive if you’re having a broken foot in florida if you’re not from the us you got to pay out of pocket that could be troublesome like really troublesome but your insurance but will pay you back later okay so something to think about now some insurance carriers actually will pay when you’re abroad but again you got to read the fine print and see what’s going on that’s why if you have an incident you have something happen call them they have an email they have a phone number get in contact with them so you can find out how you can pay because i know when liam got his hands smashed in china i mean it was bad we ended up in the hospital i had to pay 300 to join the the hospital when i was there i had the receipts i had the stuff so i had to pay it right then to get him in the hospital but later on my insurance company sent me a check for 300 bucks to cover the you know initiation fee for that hospital and my last dome for you is don’t wait to buy travel insurance look sometimes there’s a limit of when you can buy travel insurance like you have to buy within 24 hours of booking your flights or booking your trips that’s why you’ll see on airlines they’ll sell you you know your plane tickets and they’ll be an option would you like to you know insure your trip for 50 bucks or 20 bucks or 100 bucks or whatever you need to do that as soon as possible especially if you have pre-existing conditions you don’t want to find out later oh no you can’t get insurance for this you need to buy it right away so don’t wait to get it get it as soon as you decide to make your trip so you have it because one i think it’ll be cheaper but also then you have less chance of them saying no too late it’s only now that you know more about where you’re going that you want to have insurance too bad and so that’s why sometimes i think that you could also look at is when you’re looking at travel insurance you can look at it in terms of getting travel insurance trip by trip or if you travel a lot you can get an annual travel insurance policy so that’s also something to consider for those of you that travel quite often anyway i know i gave you a lot of information about travel insurance but this is stuff that you really should know before you go travel so you can be prepared because you don’t want to end up with a broken foot and no insurance in a place that has really expensive medical care take my word for it all right so anyway i want to say bye from here in south beach have a great time traveling i really hope you never have to use that travel insurance but that piece of minded issue can really help out when things go wrong and our go wrongs i broke this collarbone i broke my foot um kit liam smashed his hand in the thing caleb cut his head open chassis got hit in the eye with a bamboo and actually slit her eye and she had to wear eye patch for a while caleb had uh allergic reaction we had to get into a hospital for the shots these things happen when you travel it’s just part of life and i just want you to be better prepared so have a great time and i wish y’all the best and bye from here on south beach in miami beach bye

source