Shakespeare clearly had trip insurance on his mind!
To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles.
—Hamlet in Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Dude. Seriously. Shakespeare totally must’ve been talking about trip insurance in Hamlet! I get asked all the time if it’s worth it to buy the travel insurance. The answer is a complicated web of mental acrobatics thru my old Worst Case Scenario book from the 1990’s or early 2000’s coupled with math that can only be described as suggestive at best. Bottom line, not only is Shakespeare talking about travel insurance in Hamlet but travel insurance is just about as easy to decipher as Hamlet! Let me help you out…
You should not worry about travel insurance if:
Are young and healthy yourself
The people you love are also, reasonably youngish and healthy adjacent
Here is a good one…. if you have trip insurance thru other places. For example, a travel credit card will often come with some amount of trip insurance automatically. Strangely, my husbands HR offers free trip insurance as one of the benefits. I don’t know how common this is but I suppose they want their employees to be able to get back to work if anything crazy were to happen. It’s worth looking in to if any of your credit cards, AAA memberships, banking or HR departments have travel perks you didn’t even know you had.
You should definitely get travel insurance if:
You yourself have any specific health concerns. People with asthma or diabetes may want to think a little harder about trip insurance with extra medical coverage
You have a high pressure job that may implode without you. I jest but listen, if you’re a small business owner and something hits the fan and splatters sideways you gotta get your trip interruption coverage working my friend!
Your immediate family or loved one is sick. I never have any regrets about buying extra coverage when my dad was sick with cancer. It allowed me to mentally vacation knowing if I needed to get back at any moment I wasn’t going to have any trouble doing so.
The country you are visiting requires it. After covid the rule is there are no rules! We had to have very specific trip insurance to visit Costa Rica and it was a part of our Visa and how we got into and out of the country.
Do I recommend getting the travel insurance thru the cruise line/all inclusive/airline exc or thru an independent insurance company like AIG Travelguard?
Well there is another complicated set of questions about coverage amounts, pricing and what you specifically need for yourself on this trip. Bottom line is call me and we can go thru it together.