budget cheap travel insurance

As mentioned on jafatravel.com's page on budget travel insurance, it is difficult to find cheap travel insurance. This is because what you will be covered for will be dependant upon the premium that you pay. On this page, jafatravel.com looks the factors which you should consider when buying travel insurance.

You may be able to find budget cheap travel insurance if you forgo some of the benefits which you might receive if are paying a higher premium.

Cost of travel insurance

The cost of budget cheap travel insurance is a large factor in deciding which one you should buy. But this should not be the decisive factor. Generally, the less you pay, the less you'll be covered for.

The cost of a premium isn't that flexible either. The greatest cost saving you can get is if you decide not to buy it! So if you decide on buying budget cheap travel insurance, I suggest you make sure you're fully covered for anything you might do. There is nothing worse than thinking you are insured when you aren't.

Where are you going?

The cost of budget cheap travel insurance is highly dependent upon your destinations. It will cost a lot more if you are making a trip to the USA compared to other places in the world.  Travel insurance is generally broken down into 3 categories (from most expensive to least)

• North America
• Europe
• Rest of the world

The premium you pay depends on whether you have any part of your trip in each of these categories. For example, if part of your trip is to North America, you will be paying the travel insurance premium as if your entire trip were in North America (which can sometimes be quite unreasonable!).

What is covered?

The coverage of budget cheap travel insurance will vary with the dollar amounts that you are covered for.  This provides one point of comparison when looking at different budget cheap travel insurance policies.

You usually won't need to worry about the cover for medical insurance. This amount is always higher than what you require. Here is a list of things that are generally covered in a travel insurance policy:

• Cancellation Fees & Lost Deposits
  
• Overseas Emergency Medical Assistance
  
• Overseas Medical/Hospital/Dental Expenses
  
• Additional Expenses
  
• Hospital Cash Allowance
  
• Accidental Death
  
• Permanent Disability
  
• Loss of Income
  
• Travel Documents, Credit Cards & Travellers Cheques
  
• Theft of Cash
  
• Luggage/Personal Effects
  
• Luggage Delay Allowance
  
• Travel Delay - Disruption of Journey
  
• Alternative Transport Expenses
  
• Personal Liability
  
• Rental Vehicle Excess

Hiring a car?

If you're planning to hire a car, take special note of the amount of rental vehicle excess covered. This will be important as the rental car company will try to sell you additional car insurance which reduces the excess that you are required to pay in the event of a car accident.

If you already have travel insurance, you may be able to avoid it as your travel insurance may cover some rental car insurance excess. For example, you may have cover of $1,000 for rental car insurance excess under your travel insurance policy. The car rental insurance excess may be $750. If you're involved in a car accident, then you would need to pay the excess of $750 to the car rental company. However, you can claim this back under your travel insurance policy as you are covered for $1000. In this example, the car rental company may try to sell you additional car insurance to reduce your excess to say $250. You wouldn't need to purchase this as you are already covered for this under your travel insurance policy. There's no point paying for extra insurance when you already are covered!

Skiing/snowboarding, adventure sports and other activities

Some travel insurance policies do not cover snow sports or adventure sports. If this is going to be a part of your trip, make sure you are covered for it. Again, it will be terrible finding out that you aren't covered when you thought you were.

I was caught out by this when I slightly hurt myself whilst cliff jumping in Thailand. It was only a slight cartilage strain but I still ended up seeing the doctor and being prescribed some medication. Upon my return, I made a claim and explained the situation to the travel insurance company. However, "cliff jumping" wasn't one of their "prescribed activities" and wasn't covered under the policy. The medical costs were very cheap in Thailand so I didn't bother pursuing it.

Excess buy out

For a small additional sum (usually $20-$30), you can buy out the insurance excess. This means that there will be no excess payable when you make a claim. I always buy this when I have travel insurance. My reasoning is that you buy travel insurance to be covered in case something does go wrong. You also buy it because you believe that there is a chance that something will go wrong. If you didn't think anything could go wrong, you wouldn't have purchased travel insurance in the first place.

When something does go wrong, you are going to make a claim because you have the right to. As much as possible, you shouldn't limit yourself from making that claim.

jafatravel.com believes that if you're not going to purchase the excess buy out, you might as well not buy the travel insurance in the first place.

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