Tag: Major

Should You Consider Travel Health Insurance,

Are you a recent college graduate looking for that dream summer back packing across Europe, A young adventurer who wants to re-trace the steps of Genghis Khan, A middle aged individual who is years overdue on a really good vacation, For many individuals, a truly great vacation includes traveling. Getting away means just that, getting away. But there is one major detail that many individuals tend to ignore that they shouldn’t: travel health insurance in case of emergency.

It’s funny how so many people think of the importance of having health insurance at home, where they even know doctors and hospitals, yet then they leave to take a trip overseas and don’t have any coverage at all. How can you leave your country without health insurance,

Contrary to popular belief, many plans do not cover you outside of the US. The last thing you need is to be stuck in a foreign emergency room with a broken arm, strange rash, or dysentery without any protection of health insurance and any ability to pay for service. Even things as small as rashes or infections can become a very big deal.

Travel health insurance has other benefits beyond just its obvious name. Don’t think of travel health insurance as just being health insurance for overseas, but think of it as kind of an overarching insurance that happens to include health. Many of these plans are cheap, and not only do they cover important fees such as hospital and medical expenses, but also things like lost luggage, trip cancellation, emergency dental work, evacuation, and even accidental death. If you can get all of this coverage for a cheap price, why would you even consider leaving without it, You can buy the policy, get an insurance card and an emergency number to call, and that’s it. You now have peace of mind.

When contemplating travel health insurance, many people only think of small things that don’t really matter in the larger picture: loss of money, stolen camera, or stolen luggage. Illness and accidents are possible realities wherever you go, and need to be accounted for. This is the purpose of travel insurance. To define it succinctly: travel health insurance is a policy specifically designed to protect and cover you from any and all possible risk you might run into while traveling abroad.

Travel health insurance is a great policy, and generally is very cheap. Most likely, and obviously you hope, that during a vacation overseas nothing will go wrong and you will enjoy a trip that will create memories worth lasting for a life time. But peace of mind is a good thing to have, and just in case things go wrong you want to have a plan in case a dream vacation ends up turning its head towards being an ugly nightmare.

Travel health insurance gives you this option, covering you in almost any event and helping to give a security abroad that you would hope to have even if you never left your front door. So find a good policy, and enjoy the trip!

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Insuring Your Overseas Home

The number of UK residents how now have overseas homes is steadily on the increase. In some cases these overseas homes are for holiday purposes, such as with Spain, in other cases they’re bought for the purpose of spending at least part of the time of the owner’s retirement, such as with Cyprus. Either way, more often than not the British owner of the home would prefer not to have the overseas home insured by an offshore insurance provider, but rather by an insurance provider closer to home.

So, if you have an overseas home and would like a UK home insurance company to provide you with insurance, what can you expect to get,

Home Contents and Home Buildings Insurance

A number of providers of overseas home insurance policies have merged the home contents and home insurance policies to be an amalgamated overseas home insurance policy. This mega policy should cover you for both circumstances.

Public Liability Insurance

Should be a must, especially if you are considering renting the overseas home out for the part of the year that you are not there.

Lost Earnings

If you think that renting your overseas home about is going to be a major money spinner for you, you may well want to consider insuring yourself against any lost earnings. Basically, this insurance will reimburse you if your holiday tenants suddenly have to cancel.

Theft

As with mainland UK home insurance policies, you need to make sure you are protected against theft. All the usual precautions about invoicing your possession needs to be taken into consideration with your holiday home. Also, you need to check the excess deductibles carefully, as in most cases this can range from 50 – 200

Natural Disasters

As recent natural disaster such as the hurricanes, tsunami, and earth quakes have shown, certain geographical regions outside of the UK are more prone to natural disasters than the UK itself is. Consequently, you should make sure that your overseas home is adequately insured against this risk.

Insurance for your overseas home can be arranged cheaply over the internet, or else you can arrange to have the insurance provider by a specialist overseas home insurance company in your area. Do keep in mind that as this is effectively your second home, your home insurance premiums will be marginally higher than you may normally be expected to pay with the home you live in, especially if you are using the home in any way to generate income.

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Should I Purchase Travel Insurance, Travel Tips

This is one of those age-old questions with no definitive answer. It’s estimated that 30 percent of Americans purchase travel insurance, which is a drastic increase since 9/11, when less than 10 percent of travelers were insured.

If you’re flying on a $150 ticket to see Aunt Irma in Wisconsin, you probably don’t need travel insurance. But on a trip such as yours, travel insurance can come in handy if something unexpectedly disrupts your trip. Your first step is to compare the cost of the trip versus the cost of the policy.

The most common situations when travel insurance comes in handy are:

Your flight is canceled

Your passport and wallet are stolen

You require medical treatment while abroad

You need to cancel your trip due to illness

An unexpected hurricane hits your destination

Your airline/cruise line/tour company go bankrupt

Reasons NOT to purchase travel insurance are:

You’re afraid of terrorism

A hurricane is going to hit your destination (this applies if the storm has already been named by the National Weather Service)

Your pet is ill

Your flight is delayed for so long that you want to cancel

One major caveat: Never purchase travel insurance from the same tour operator or cruise line with which you’re traveling. If that company goes out of business, there may not be money to cover your claim. Use a third-party provider (that includes travel agents).

Also, don’t forget about medical insurance. Even if you are covered for basic emergency care overseas, in almost all cases, your current health insurance does NOT cover you to evacuate you and fly you back to the U.S. Something called “Medical Evacuation and Repatriation” insurance comes in handy here. You pay a yearly fee, and if you get sick or injured overseas, the policy will get you treated, stabilized and flown back to the U.S. to the hospital of your choice, not theirs. There are a number of good companies that provide this type of plan, such as MedJet Assist.

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