World trip preparation

How to select insurance for a world trip?

Selection criteria

Since we are travelling for probably several years (however the exact dates and countries are still unsure, we only have a Plan A for now), we wanted to have an insurance which covers us for more than 90 days. This criterion immediately excluded almost all the insurance companies in our home countries, thus we needed to look for options in other countries where sabbatical years, RTW’s (round the world trips) and digital nomad life are more common, therefore services are offered to them.

Besides, this “over 90-days”, we had the following criteria which were taken into consideration when comparing insurances:

  • Do they cover European citizens?

We are Italian and Hungarian, we needed to check whether – for instance – the UK insurances cover only UK citizens or other Europeans as well.

  • Can we start the insurance when we are already travelling?

This is connected to the possibility to prolong the insurance while we are already on the go.

  • Is the insurance prolongable?

This is to ensure that if our trip gets longer than planned, we can get insurance for the remaining months as well.

  • How many times can we prolong it? 

We are going to change continents several times, so for the beginning of the trip we would purchase one which doesn’t cover the USA, then we would cover our North American trip, afterwards, we would prolong it for South America.

  • Coverage of medical expenses and hospitalisation

After the questions about whether we can even take the given insurance, this is the most important issue. We are travelling to countries with the most expensive healthcare, therefore we want to make it sure that whatever happens, we are not going to go bankrupt.

Average medical cost in the USA – Tap for the bigger picture. Source: https://www.internationalinsurance.com/resources/healthcare-costs-in-the-usa.php

 

  • Emergency dental care

Even if we tried to prepare for the trip with several dental visits and removing our wisdom teeth, still anything can happen. If you ever been tormented by teeth pain, you can understand why is it among the first criteria.

  • Does it cover volunteering?

There is a possibility that we are going to volunteer in some countries, therefore we are also checking whether the insurance covers us if something happens to us during this time.

  • Does it cover excess for car rental?

If you are not taking the – often very expensive – full insurance when you are renting a car, you may need to pay the excess (which can be even around 1500 EUR) or deductible when something happens to the car. For this reason, we are trying to find cheaper alternatives, e.g. having a third-party car insurance (like icarhireinsurance.com) or having the car excess cover included in the travel insurance. (Like in case of True traveller.)

  • Trip cancellation, delay, luggage, personal belonging coverage

We were preparing for this trip with a good quality backpack, mobile phones and a laptop to write a post, thus we check how much can we reimbursed in case of theft or damage.

 

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