No to travel insurance? THINK AGAIN!

"Wealth is the ability to fully experience life."

--- Henry David Thoreau



Perhaps like me, you became accustomed to eschewing travel insurance in your youth and carried that thrifty habit into middle age.

You may have saved hundreds if not thousands of dollars by skipping travel insurance over the decades, but unless you're a vampire, with each year passing year, age takes its toll.

It may seem impossible, but you might even have moved beyond middle age.

That alone is good reason to re-think travel insurance.

If a serious medical emergency forces you to cancel your plans before you begin or to interrupt your trip to seek medical care or fly home, you  will be happy you have insurance.

But it goes beyond just health.



For example, traffic jams and air delays might force you to miss your cruise.

Over the weekend, perhaps you saw TV reports of airports jammed with protestors objecting to a new immigration policy that delayed entry into the country for 109 immigrants from Syria, Iraq and a five other countries.  Certainly those 109 immigrants who were delayed would have wished they had travel insurance had they actually been returned home.  But so would thousands of other travelers who missed their flights because of the demonstrations.

In Los Angeles International Airport alone, fifteen flights were cancelled when airliner crews couldn't reach their gates.  Figuring 300 passengers per flight, and that's 4,500 people who might have missed important job interviews, dying words of a loved one or a landmark birthday party.

And, of course, some were heading for cruise vacations.



While insurance wouldn't have given them back their life moments, it at least would have given those cruisers comfort in knowing they would have some funds to either catch up with that ship or pay for a similar trip in the future.

On a smaller scale, there's been a really disturbing trend for protestors to take over city streets or even freeways, which delays literally tens of thousands of people, many of whom had flights or cruises to catch.  Interpretation?  You might not be able to get out of your home town on schedule.

Without wishing to be a fear monger, if you turn on the news, you'll undoubtedly come across some diconcerting events happening somewhere in the world.

It is highly unlikely that a terrorist event will happen where you travel exactly when you're there, but if the improbable happens, wouldn't you like to be protected against losing your travel funds?

There are other reasons for coverage, too.




Emergency medical conditions including medical evacutation, lost luggage, and blizzards, hurricanes or other catasrophic weather conditions that stop you from reaching your ship.

You'll at least be comforted to know you aren't going to lose all those hard-earned savings set aside for that dream trip.

You may even decide it's worth buying travel insurance that expands to include "cancel for any reason" coverage.  After all, sometimes it isn't an actual emergency as much as angst about what might happen based on some trend you see developing.

In the final analysis, it comes down to peace of mind of knowing you're prepared financially if things do go terribly awry.