Everything You Need to Know About Travel Insurance | Deep Dive & Q&A

Travel Better with Chris - Yellow Productions Podcast

Host Chris interviews certified travel insurance advisor Lisa Jarvis to explore whether travel insurance is a necessary expense or an unnece

Key takeaways

Lisa Jarvis shares that her family was left unprotected during a medical emergency in London because they relied on domestic insurance and credit cards.
The Chase Sapphire card is highlighted as a superior option because it allows coverage even if only part of the trip was booked using the card.

Main topics

Travel Insurance vs. Credit Card Benefits
Trip Cancellation and Interruption

Notable quotes

I personally got burned by not having travel insurance.

Conclusion

The episode provides actionable advice for travelers to maximize their

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hey fellow explorers, a frequently asked question that I get on the channel and a regularly requested topic for these live streams is, Chris, can you do a video to talk about travel insurance? We have a lot of questions about them. And so that's what we're going to be talking about in today's live stream. And I found the perfect guest to join me. When I was at TravelCon earlier this year, I met Lisa Jarvis and she told me that she specializes in everything boring in travel. and is a certified travel insurance advisor. And so through the magic of the internet, we're going to bring Lisa here on screen. Lisa, welcome to Travel Tips by Chris. Thanks for joining me today. Speaker 1 (0:37) Thank you so much, Chris. I'm happy to be here. Speaker 2 (0:40) And Lisa is also a content creator. She has 42,000 followers on the gram, I think is the cool kids call it, at chasingmemories.co. And so I've got a few questions that I often hear from y'all to start this off, and then we'll take questions from those of you that are on the live stream. And so, Lisa, the first question I want to start with for you is, is travel insurance actually worth the cost, or is it just an upsell that we always get on every travel page? that we booked because those companies want to make more money. Speaker 1 (1:12) Yeah, it definitely sometimes feels like an upsell because you really often don't understand what you're getting. I personally got burned by not having travel insurance. We had our first big international trip. My daughter, who was three at the time, fell off this tiny little ladder in London and broke her arm. And we thought, oh, we're good. We are. young, we're healthy, we'll be fine. We thought our insurance back home was going to cover us. We thought we had a credit card. We thought there's the NHS. We thought we were triple covered. And turns out they all failed us. So for us personally, we learned, oh gosh, this is something we need to be in. My mom had been a travel agent for 25 years. So she got a big fat, I told you so. Speaker 2 (1:58) for me. Speaker 1 (1:59) So for us, it was worth it. So I think it depends on your personal risk level. I think internationally, it's something to consider far more than domestically. I personally don't even always get it domestic. So really kind of depends on you. But I'm also a believer. Don't overpay. Speaker 2 (2:18) Yeah, good. Good. We'd like to save people money. So Lisa, it sounds like travel runs in your family blood, family blood. You mentioned credit cards. So tell me when like credit card protection is enough and maybe when you need something else. Cause I'm probably one who says like, well, I've Speaker 1 (2:37) got my Speaker 2 (2:37) credit card, so I'm all good. So tell me why I'm not. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 1 (2:41) Well, I think the big trick is you need to know what does your card actually offer and what are the rules they require you to play by? So. I'm big into the points and miles world. And so I think the main credit card that is the best is the Chase Sapphire card because they have a rule stating that you can have either booked all of your trip or. part of your trip and still be eligible. Hey, look at that. The Speaker 2 (3:09) Chase Sapphire card. There we go. I feel like I should have my wallet right here. I got mine too. That's Chris's wallet right now. Speaker 1 (3:15) And it doesn't matter if it's the preferred or the reserve. Both of these, they say, as long as you have booked part of your trip. So there's tons of credit cards that you have to have booked every single part of your trip with that card. in order to even be eligible for any of their travel benefits. So if you don't, and that's what burned us. We had a Marriott card that we thought had our coverage, but we hadn't booked our entire trip on it. So that disqualified us. So that's really good to know. So I think where travel insurance wins with the credit card is trip cancellation and trip interruption. Not every card has it. Again, not every card. offers that or has you know you have to have everything booked on there but i think that's one of the big wins i also think rental coverage for rental cars that's also another really big win yeah Speaker 2 (4:10) let's unpack a couple of those things that you just said you said trip cancellation and trip interruption coverage and i feel like often people who are just getting started in these things when people give advice they're like you should get travel insurance And so there's obviously lots of different types of travel insurance. So can you break down what the difference is between travel interruption and travel cancellation insurance? Speaker 1 (4:31) Yes. Yes. So first off, any of these need to be for a covered reason. So your credit card is going to have a list of covered reasons. A travel insurance plan is going to have a list of covered reasons. So that could be something like I busted my knee and I can't go on my trip anymore. Trip cancellation happens before your trip. You need to cancel for a covered reason. Trip interruption is I'm on my trip, I bust my knee, and now I need to go home. Or maybe my mom, who's in assisted living, gets, you know, her health changes, and I need to leave my trip and go home. That would be interruption. Speaker 2 (5:06) Right. And then that would be different than travel medical insurance, right? Correct. Yeah. And then that's different than rental car insurance. If your car gets... Speaker 1 (5:15) You run Speaker 2 (5:16) into somebody or they run into you or you're in a parking garage and a pole jumps out in front of you. Speaker 1 (5:21) Exactly. Speaker 2 (5:22) They Speaker 1 (5:22) tend to do that. They Speaker 2 (5:23) do. They do. Blue Tornado on the live stream asks, was there a time when travel insurance saved you? Speaker 1 (5:32) Uh, yeah. So one of the benefits is trip delay. So if you have like a flight delay and we got stuck in this massive storm in Germany, it was on our layover. Our flight got canceled. We had an overnight unexpectedly. I had my three little kids with us and we were canceled on the flight and told, well, you're going to be here for a little bit. We can't get you back to a gate yet. And so I knew because of. what our protections were that we had $200 per person per day to spend. So for my family of five, that's a thousand bucks. We wound up booking a hotel that was at the airport right there in Frankfurt. We got off the plane. We walked straight to the hotel while everybody else got in line to hope for a hotel voucher from the airline. And we wound up the next day being back on with some of those same people. And like, we lived it up. We ate room service. We had steak. We had the works. We went back. We bought all the snacks for the kids to get back on the plane. And then there were people from our flight the day before that were like, man, I had to pay out of pocket. The only thing that was left was that crazy expensive hotel. And this whole thing is going to cost me a thousand plus dollars. And I'm like, yeah, we just got Speaker 2 (6:48) all that for free. We didn't tell them that. Speaker 1 (6:51) Yeah. So that's one spot where it saved us. It's saved us. My daughter hurt her foot one time and that was actually actually a domestic trip that we had decided to get the coverage on. And she hurt her foot on our trip and we were getting ready to go home and she was still hobbling. And I was like, you know, if we go home and get our x-ray, we have to pay our copay with our medical insurance. But since we had the travel insurance and we were still traveling. When Speaker 2 (7:18) you Speaker 1 (7:18) got hurt. Speaker 2 (7:18) There you go. Yeah. Speaker 1 (7:20) Yep. So we were just like, okay, so this works out. So we didn't have to use our actual home medical insurance at all. And we dodged a copay. So we've saved more than we've spent on our premiums for sure. Speaker 2 (7:36) Grant in the chat says, Chris is speaking from experience on the pole jumping out. So Chris's story on travel insurance is absolutely with the Chase Sapphire Reserve card. And this video is not sponsored by Chase, but it could be Chase. Anyway, so yeah, right. I had the experience when I was in Vancouver and we rented a minivan and I was pulling out of the hotel parking garage on the last day of the trip. And the pole jumped out in front of my car and straight beside of my car, which was like $2,000. Can Speaker 1 (8:04) you use that card? Speaker 2 (8:05) $2,000 in damages, but yes, I used this card to rent the car, and Chase covered the $2,000 repair. So I will rent every car that I rent with my Chase Sapphire Reserve to get that coverage. Speaker 1 (8:20) Yeah, Capital One Venture X also Speaker 2 (8:22) has good rental coverage. Okay, that's Speaker 1 (8:25) a Speaker 2 (8:25) good tip. Speaker 1 (8:25) Yeah. They actually have a higher, I think Chase is $60,000 for their cars, and Capital One is $75,000. Speaker 2 (8:32) Okay. I don't rent any Ferraris or Lambos or things like that. I know, right? Yeah, that's right. That's right. Okay. Let's see. DJT Forever asked this question. How about the difference between the price of travel insurance covering and not covering the USA? Speaker 1 (8:52) So if I'm understanding that correctly, like I'm assuming they're asking if it costs more because you're covering outside of the U.S. for an international trip and it should be the same for most companies. I would definitely if you have a company that's trying to charge you more because you're going international, then I would recommend finding a different company. Speaker 2 (9:13) I wonder. And DJT, if we didn't answer your question, like, let us know. The other assumption I might make, and I only know enough information to be dangerous in this topic, but it's, like, travel medical insurance, perhaps, that, like, covers a bunch of countries, but, like, doesn't cover the USA. I feel like there might be plans, and you could be like, Chris, these plans don't exist. But I feel like, you know, the things I read. There might Speaker 1 (9:36) be. Yeah, Speaker 2 (9:37) the things I read on the internet. Yeah. Yeah, Speaker 1 (9:40) there's lots of... Insurance company. How do I say this without bagging on anyone? Speaker 2 (9:45) There's lots of insurance companies Speaker 1 (9:47) that I see circulating social media that I'm like, just do your research. Speaker 2 (9:53) Yeah. Do your Speaker 1 (9:54) research. Speaker 2 (9:55) Go to some of the known companies. Yeah. Speaker 1 (9:58) Yeah. They should cover you medically, whether you're in the United States or out of the United States. And you would want to find a company that is primary medical insurance. Speaker 2 (10:10) So when people buy travel insurance, are they buying it for like a year for all of their trips or are they buying it like per trip? Like here's a trip I'm buying travel insurance or are they getting it like they would medical insurance and get it for a long period? Speaker 1 (10:23) Yeah, you can do either. You can buy an annual plan. I don't typically recommend them. The annual plans were initially built and designed for the business traveler who does like the same rinse and repeat trip over and over. They typically don't have trip cancellation and trip interruption coverage when you have an annual plan. They typically have a lot lower medical. And then I think people just assume like, oh, I. I bought my plan. I'm good. But you still actually have to go in and manually input each trip. So my opinion is get a better individual plan because then you can get your interruption, your cancellation, better medical, and you're doing the same amount of work as you would with an annual plan. Speaker 1 (11:11) This is probably Speaker 2 (11:12) going to be a challenging question, Lisa, but I'm going to ask it anyway, which is people always ask the question. They always ask me the budget questions. Chris, how much should I budget for? How much should people budget for travel insurance? Should they budget something relative to the total size of their trip, relative to the length of their trip? How should people give a ballpark about how much they should expect to pay? Speaker 1 (11:33) Yeah, so they estimate that it's about 5 % to 10 % of your trip cost. However. The number one, well, there's two driving factors of your cost. Number one is your age. Can't mess with that. As much as we want to be 29 again, we're a real age. And then number two is your trip cost. So what I think a lot of people don't understand is you can actually say that your trip cost is whatever you want it to be. Now, you never want to like give a number that's higher than your actual trip cost because they're... They're going to need documentation. You can never legally make money on insurance. So there's no point in over putting your trip costs. But if I have a $10,000 trip and I think, you know, it really sting if I lost all 10,000, but I'm okay if I lose 5,000, I can say my trip is 5,000 instead of 10,000 to lower my cost. But also this is where I feel like those cards win. Because that trip cost is really just ensuring your cancellation and your interruption coverage. Like if I have to cancel or interrupt my trip for a covered reason, it will protect my money. If you have a card like the Chase Sapphire card, sponsor Chris, by the way, then you can take that. Speaker 1 (12:57) trip cancellation and trip interruption and marry that with a plan where you can say, hey, my trip cost is actually zero dollars. You don't get cancellation and interruption then with your travel insurance. But if you're covered with that, with your card and you're happy with what your guide benefit says and your rules of chase and all of that, then you can essentially marry those two things together. That's how I personally do my own travel insurance. And I cost $24 to $36 for my coverage based off of that. But if I Speaker 2 (13:32) wanted, Speaker 1 (13:33) sorry, Speaker 2 (13:34) go ahead. I'll let you finish. If I Speaker 1 (13:36) want to insure $10,000 on my travel insurance, it's going to be more expensive. But if I'm holding that $10,000 in Chase's hands, then I can get it for super cheap. Speaker 2 (13:49) Okay.