How to reduce your travel insurance when you are on a budget

If you have recently booked a holiday – or will soon book one – for this year, have you thought about travel insurance? A peculiarly high proportion of travelers won’t; This is Money reports that 47% will not implement travel insurance. This is concerning when it is taken into account that this insurance could financially assist if they encounter troubles with their holidays. If you have forgone travel insurance due to its expense, here are some ways in which you can lower the cost.

Cheap is not always cheerful

It is understandable to opt strictly for the cheapest insurance policy if you are financially feeling the pinch. Indeed, you could find that, as is commonly the case, just making a claim would incur a hefty excess. However, by not even looking at that policy’s small print, you risk settling for insurance that, in the event of a problem during your holiday, can’t cover the costs of dealing with that problem.

Thus, when looking for a travel insurance policy, you should first consider not how the costs vary between policies, but instead what issues you would like coverage for. Upon scrutinizing different policies, you could realize that many of them offer restricted coverage for people suffering such medical conditions as diabetes, cancer, heart conditions and high blood pressure. Meanwhile, even pastimes as seemingly harmless as pony trekking could be excluded from some policies’ coverage.

Discern what exactly different policies will cover you for

Given that even many of us who do buy travel insurance do so in a hurry, we wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t realize the complete extent of the insurance’s potential coverage. It isn’t just problems on the holiday itself that the insurance could help you with. The insurance could come to the rescue if, before you even set off, your airline goes bust or you fall ill, necessitating the trip’s cancellation.

For that reason, buying travel insurance shouldn’t be a last-minute move; instead, you should do it at the same time that you book the holiday itself. This emphasizes the need for you to thoroughly research different policies at an early stage. With each policy that you mull over, carefully read through the terms and conditions before you buy it. Will the policy compensate you following flight delays or the necessary cancellation of the journey? You need to consider key issues like these.

Prepare for the possibility of medical emergencies

However carefully you might look after yourself and choose a holiday destination, you can never completely rule out the possibility of suffering a medical emergency. Therefore, making sure that your travel insurance policy of choice covers such an emergency is vital. The costs of a claim could seriously stack up if a medical emergency lands you a stay in a foreign hospital.

If you are eligible, you could apply for what is called a European Health Insurance Card or EHIC. Available to citizens of European Economic Area (EEA) countries – which include the United Kingdom, France and Germany – and Switzerland, an EHIC provides access to state healthcare in these territories at less or zero cost, as the UK Government website explains.

However, the limitations of the card, which can be obtained freely over the Internet, mean that it cannot be considered a complete replacement for a far-reaching travel insurance policy. You should consider, for example, that treatment will not always be free – and that the card would entitle you to cheaper treatment only at state-run hospitals. Therefore, its usefulness would obviously be hindered if you holidayed in a region that did not have such hospitals.

If you obtain this card and will be visiting somewhere with good state healthcare provision, you can avoid insurance premiums inflated to cover huge medical treatment costs, as The Telegraph notes.

Shrink the risks by shrinking your trip’s length

If you are anxious about how you will be able to pay for your travel insurance, then consider that insurers will charge higher where they perceive the greater likelihood of something going wrong. Therefore, by finding ways of lowering this likelihood, you could also relieve the cost of picking up a policy. That seems simple, but acting on this principle might not always seem so.

So, here are a few pointers. Try to keep your holiday as short as possible – without, obviously, too seriously compromising the enjoyment that you are travelling for in the first place. In following this tip, you should keep in mind how long it would take for you to get to the destination and back. Hence, if you currently live in the United Kingdom, you should strongly consider places like France and the Netherlands, which are nearby while still offering exciting culture and attractions.

Long haul journeys, such as between the United States and the United Kingdom, might be best avoided. Holidays involving this kind of travel would usually last a minimum of two weeks, leading to higher risks. You should also consider that many travel insurance providers treat a week as eight days; thus, your premiums would be lower if the travel only lasted three or four days. The shorter the trip, the less likely you are to need to make a claim – and insurers like this.

A few other, little ways of trimming the expense

Despite our earlier recommendation of buying insurance when booking the stay away, you shouldn’t purchase insurance that your travel company offers at the time, as this will be pricier than a separate policy. You could instead turn to an independent insurance broker. If you live in the UK, that broker could be Call Wiser, the team at which could help you find great value cover for just one trip or an entire year of travel. The staff are friendly and experienced.

Yes, turning to two companies is better than trusting just one – and another, similar principle at play is that taking more than one holiday this year could serve you better. That is, at least, when it comes to finding a financially favorable travel insurance policy, as an annual multi-trip policy will be cheaper and rid you of the hassle of having to remember to obtain cover for each separate trip.

If following all of these tips still does not bring down the cost of insurance sufficiently to your satisfaction, you could decide against a very action-packed holiday. Standard policies will often not cover you for troubles arising from participating in sports like jet skiing, water-skiing, mountain biking and pony trekking. Meanwhile, winter sports like skiing will need specialist cover.

Some words with which to wrap up the article

We won’t pretend that finding the most suitable travel insurance – taking into account both practical and financial concerns – is straightforward. Even once you have absorbed all of the advice in this article, you could still only narrowly avoid some pitfalls – particularly if you haven’t planned sufficiently far ahead. Still, we hope that we have provided something of a helping hand.

Before you set off, remember to include your insurer’s emergency contact details and copies of your insurance documents in your luggage. You wouldn’t want to notice these items missing if you find yourself having to make a claim.

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