A friend of mine, to whom I'll refer to as Tom, called me at 3 am Nepal time from a hospital. He told me that while hiking, Tom saw some other tourists doing a paragliding activity and figured it was a good time to join. He was not wrong, unfortunately; he suffered a broken collarbone and shouldered, and multiple bruises on one side of his body. Does my travel insurance cover this type of accident? According to the policy, it does not. His policy did not include paragliding as an activity, and he would have to bear the approximate cost of $8,000 for his treatment and return to the nearest hospital. Tom is certainly not an outlier. Most people buy travel insurance policies with the assumption that everything is covered, thinking that there is no travel insurance without extensive restrictions and exceptions. Here's a reality check about what does travel insurance covers and the items it usually does not. The short story Travel insurance can cover eligible medical expenses, emerg...

How Much Does Travel Insurance Cost? Breaking Down the Numbers "$247 for insurance? Isn't that a bit pricey for a $2, 800 trip?" My friend Jake was planning a two-week Europe get-away and was surprised with the travel insurance price. He was wondering if that figure was fair or if he was getting taken advantage of. I showed him my latest policy as a reference. I had a similar cover for a $2, 800 trip and had paid $186. One of the reasons his price was higher was that he was 52 years old; I'm 38. Age only caused his premium to go up by $60. "But is it really worth it?" he replied. "That's almost the price of a night in a good hotel." Three months later Jake knew the answer. He had an accident climbing the Alps, tearing his meniscus, got hospitalized in Switzerland for a night, and had to come back home a week earlier. His insurance paid for all his medical treatments, rescue, and trip interruption expenses amounting to $12, 000. Doing the math, ...

On my first big international trip a college study tour to Costa Rica there was a little checkmark at the end of the booking process asking whether I wanted to add travel insurance for around $90. I said no — and not only had no idea what I was saying no to, but also felt virtuous about lightening the load on my already strained wallet. Nothing went wrong on that particular trip, so I never thought of it again, until I met other travelers who had not been so lucky. Since then, I've familiarized myself with enough documents to know what I'm looking for and what I can safely ignore. This article is all about travel insurance: what it is, how it works (or doesn't) before, during, and after your trip, and what it has in common (and what doesn't) with your regular health care coverage. What is a travel insurance? Travel insurance is an agreement that provides specified benefits of a financial or nature when an insured event occurs during the trip covered by the policy. Depen...

My friend Sarah called me from a hospital in Thailand, with a broken ankle and no idea what was happening. She did not have any travel insurance because she thought there was no need for it a two-week beach vacation seemed a pretty simple affair. However, the nearest hospital charged her more than $15,000 dollars for the procedure and a flight back to her home country and the only available flight to Thailand was in business class, as first-class seats were unavailable due to the leg room needed for the cast. It took Sarah more than a year to pay off the remaining debt. That is why I started reading the fine print of every travel policy I could find  and I would not recommend you doing otherwise. The more documents I studied, the more I realized that there are several types of coverage within the travel insurance category and that most of them have little in common beyond a generic term. That is why people are so often surprised when their cheap policy does not cover emergency inte...