I get asked this question all the time. And just this past month I actually did buy some travel insurance for my daughter as well as for my whole family. The following is a short checklist of the thought process I used in determining what plan I would choose:
- What are my concerns?
- What is covered?
- how much?
What are my concerns?
Why do I feel like I should shell out extra money for something like travel insurance – especially when I feel like I’ve already spent too much? For me having 3 children – a daughter and two sons – one of my main concerns was if they became ill right before we had to leave what would I do? Anyone with kids knows that they get sick and more often than not at the most inconvenient times – its one of the joys of being a parent;). Both my older kids had so many ear infections when they were younger that they had tubes implanted to give them some relief. So my primary concern was if we had to cancel our trip due to sickness of a family member.
Are my concerns covered?
Now I want to know if the travel insurance plan I’m looking at has the coverage for the concerns I have. This is where you want to be able to compare different plans and see if they have the coverage you’re looking for. Two things to watch out for here – buying the cheapest plan just for the sake of having some coverage or going for a high priced plan thinking that the expensive plan must cover it. In both cases you lose, either by not having the correct coverage or by paying too much for coverage you could have gotten cheaper(sometimes much cheaper).
How much?
Only after I make sure that the plan covers my concerns do I consider price. This is where your individual risk tolerance comes into play. If you only have prepaid airline tickets – like we had – you might not worry too much about suddenly cancelling. You can usually reuse the tickets later on for a fee. Will you reuse these tickets within a year or do you want cash back?
In my case I went with the Travelex TraveLite plan, which cost a total of $48 for the 5 of us. The reason I chose it was it had the coverage for unforseen sickness and it was cheap, children under 16 are free with paying adults. There were a couple of other secondary reasons I purchased it – it didn’t have too much medical or evacuation coverage, and I didn’t need much, we were going to Florida from Connecticut and our regular health insurance covered us there.
Now would I recommend the TraveLite plan for your next trip, or your daughters? Maybe. It all depends on the three points above – What are your concerns? Which plans cover them? Is the price right? In my situation the Travelex plan made the most sense. Luckily I didn’t have to use it, our trip went smooth – well except for the hubcap on my rental car. Maybe I should’ve gotten the Rental Car Collision option with the TraveLite. Then again a ruined hubcap was the least of my concerns.