Yesterday I said there wouldn’t be an Open Letters Thursday. However, I said nothing about an Open Letters Friday. So before I regale you with my thoughts on the deep subject of travel insurance, I’d like to start with a few short open letters.
Dear Justin Bieber wannabe kid bagging groceries at Kroger,
I realize that the swinging of your hair and the impressing of girls is high on your list of excruciatingly important priorities, but next time, could you please pay a little more attention to the work at hand that you are being paid to do instead of flirting with the pretty cashier. A single plastic grocery bag is not meant to be stuffed to the brim with every single item in my shopping cart. It does not and should not fit. Furthermore, I do not appreciate spending a crap ton of money on groceries only to have you smash my strawberries and bag the cosmetic items so poorly that the hand soap squirts out all over leaving a soapy mess on the produce. You should spend a little less time talking and flaunting your ignorance and a lot more time paying attention.
Sincerely,
Lara
Dear Mother Nature,
Are you quite finished being a witch and brutalizing everyone?
Sincerely,
Lara
Well, that’s that. Onto the travel insurance!
Insurance. A touchy subject. By now most of us not living beneath a rock have realized the importance of health, renters, auto, home-owners, and life insurance. You have it, you pay it, and you hope you don’t need it. But what about travel insurance? I’m always a little iffy on this one. Usually if it’s a small trip like a weekend getaway, a short cheap vacation with the family, or if we’re going somewhere within the U.S. or just taking a flight and booking a hotel somewhere, I don’t worry about it. Depending on the plan and what you feel you need coverage for, travel insurance can be hundreds of dollars. Is it really worth even more of your hard-earned and often unavailable cash to purchase hundreds of dollars worth of insurance for a thousand dollar trip? For me, the answer is usually no. But when it comes to any kind of international travel or an expensive trip, I waver back and forth but ultimately settle into feeling obligated to purchase insurance. I feel totally guilty until I do it, racked with the anxiety that if I don’t buy it and if I don’t make sure that I’m as prepared as possible, something will go horribly wrong and I’ll absolutely regret not forking over the extra two hundred dollars.
While I’ve never actually had to file a claim or rely on my travel insurance, the peace of mind it brings me is typically worth the cost of the plan. Is travel insurance just a big money-making scheme designed by some bigwig company to weasel more money out of us in exchange for a feeling of relief and security, and are we just a bunch of suckers to fall for it? Maybe. Arguably yes. But how would you feel if you truly needed it and didn’t have it? That’s the toss up. It’s a risk, and it’s a gamble. Do you waste a couple hundred bucks on something you most likely won’t need instead of using that money on lavish fruity cocktails or an adventurous volcano exploration trip, or do you lose it all when you fail to make the investment and your luggage gets shredded from being dragged behind a donkey in Istanbul and you miss your connecting flight due to a freak airline strike or inclement weather?
As a child traveling with my parents, I obviously never purchased travel insurance. I’m not actually sure if my parents did either. I assume they did, but I honestly don’t know. We took several major overseas trips, but since I, thankfully, wasn’t responsible for any planning details at the tender age of 11, I have no idea if we traveled insured or not. I do remember purchasing travel insurance for my two-week Shakespeare intensive study abroad program in college. I didn’t use it, but for the money that was being shelled out for me to participate in this fantastic opportunity, I didn’t want to miss out and I thought it was important. I do not regret purchasing it. When my friends and I treated ourselves to a week-long Caribbean cruise as a college graduation present to ourselves, I don’t know if I purchased insurance or not. I know it crossed my mind many times as it was a big purchase with an international itinerary, but I can’t remember what I decided. I wouldn’t be surprised if I did buy into it, but I’m nearly positive my friends did not.
Yesterday Ted and I purchased a travel insurance plan for our honeymoon. I feel really good about this decision. Our itinerary isn’t particularly exotic, but it does involve several major modes of transportation, multiple cities, detailed and timely schedules, a few wonderful adventures, some unreliable weather, and (the most important deciding factor here), A LOT of money that I worked really, really hard to save. Accidents happen. Luggage gets lost. Flights get delayed. People get sick. Jobs get terminated. Things go wrong. Inclement weather rears its ugly head. That could happen on any trip. It’s a risk we all take when making plans so many months in advance. But I like the peace of mind knowing that if something out of our control happens that we wouldn’t be out thousands of dollars that we’ll never see again, in addition to a screwed up vacation. Travel insurance doesn’t guarantee that this stuff won’t happen to us and I know it wouldn’t solve all our problems if it did happen to us, but at least I know that I found a great plan and an affordable plan that we are happy with, and I feel good knowing that for less than $200, should something go wrong, that we’re not going to have to just cut our losses and sort this out alone.
What do you think about travel insurance? Is it worth it to you? Have you ever used it? Would you? Under what circumstances did you bite the bullet and buy in?
Have a safe and blessed Memorial Day weekend!
