Travel Insurance Basics & Pitfalls to Avoid

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Sherri, I'm glad to be back. Thank you. I didn't give a full intro on Ben during the intro before the music, but I want to tell you guys a little bit about Ben and what he does. Ben and I met on Instagram. I feel like a dating app, right? We met on Instagram. Ben is a complete expert on all things points, miles, travel rewards, and maximizing your earnings potential, but he also knows a heck of a lot about travel insurance. He has been featured in so many different articles from World of Hyatt to Inside Edition, Nerd Wallet. He is your man. You can find him on Instagram by searching Ben's Big Deal. Ben, thank you for sharing so much of what you study every day to become an expert with us. We had such a good chat last time on Points and Miles. I felt like we need to do this again and talk about insurance because travel insurance is so complex, right? I think so because unlike other lines of insurance, travel insurance is one of these things where it's not required. Sometimes it's required. It's not necessarily required in all trips, and so sometimes people they can kind of get away without getting it. Sometimes, especially when you're doing cruises, things happen and things that you don't expect. Obviously, I just finished watching the poop cruise this past weekend. You think about it. You hope you're never on there. You hope that doesn't happen, but things happen. Gosh, you have to wonder if people, after they had that experience, if they filed claims and what they filed them for. Can you imagine the stories and the claims that would have come out of that from ruined clothing to missing work to missed flights? So many different things. Yeah, there are so many things. For example, that would have been a great example of what they call trip interruption. One of the coverages you get in travel insurance is called trip interruption, which means your trip already started, but you need to go home. For example, in this situation, everybody needs to head home. So if they ended up in Mexico or ended up in Alabama, the coverage would have paid for them to go home early because even their normal ticket would have bought at a different date and a different location, but insurance here would be able to cover some of those things as well as the things that you've lost along the way, like luggage, trip delay. There's a lot of things that people don't think about until they occur, and when those things occur, that's when you want to have the coverage. Okay, so let me outline with our audience really quickly what we are going to cover today. So Ben just started by talking about trip interruption. We're going to talk about those basic terminology points that you need to know about. We're going to talk about when you should buy travel insurance, how your age and the state you live impacts it, if you're overspending, you're undercovering yourself, if you should trust your credit card to cover everything, and when maybe an annual policy is right for you. So overall, what Ben is going to do is help you to understand what you're buying. So let's start with probably the most important thing before we even get into terminology and basics, Ben, and it's when should we buy travel insurance for our cruise, our flight, whatever it may be? So that is a great question. Buying the insurance early is actually beneficial to you. Most, if not almost all the insurance companies out there typically will not charge you a premium if you buy it earlier, meaning that you get more coverage. You get coverage sooner rather than later. So if you bought your ticket a year from now versus you bought it six months from now, by buying your ticket early and getting your coverage early, you're paying the same rate whether you're buying it now or whether you're buying it later. But the great thing is you have coverage as soon as you buy it. And you may be wondering, well, my cruise hasn't started yet. Why do I need to buy it now? Well, they cover you for things that could cause you to cancel your trip. Like you got sick. Maybe there's a death in the family. Maybe your house got, you know, invaded. And now that, you know, burglarized, those types of fires to your house, you can't go on that trip now because they're rebuilding your house. There's so many things that could happen along the way prior to your cruise that you want coverage for that you won't actually think about that will happen once again, but you're going to have coverage. And it's the same premium, whether you buy it now, you buy it the day before or three days before the trip. Interesting. Okay. So when you should buy it, the answer is as soon as possible, as soon as you, you book your cruise and, and probably best practice too, is to check with your travel advisor to make sure there's sometimes a cutoff for when you can buy your cruise insurance. So always ask your travel advisor and let them help you to pick your product. Right. You don't want to wait too late. You want to do it, you know, at the very least, like at the, I mean, you will maybe at least at the latest, like a week before it, some policies won't let you, and it really depends on the carrier, but some won't let you buy it like the day before you'll have to buy it a certain period of time before, but usually they're very, very big. If they're a good carrier, they're going to tell you, you want to buy it as soon as possible because you want the coverage to start right away. There's no benefit to waiting. Isn't there also like a clause and this may be more cruise specific. So if you're not sure I get it, but like if a storm happens or a hurricane doesn't, don't you have to have your insurance coverage before the storm is named or something for it to work? Yeah. A lot of people don't buy insurance and then they go, Oh no, my cruise may be affected. And then they try to go buy insurance after that fact. And once again, if you buy it earlier, then you're covered for every peril, but if you're trying to buy it, once you there's impending, some carriers may say, no, we may not cover that. And so you're always running into that. It's kind of the same situation. Like you got in a car accident and then you didn't have insurance. And now you're trying to get into the insurance company after you had the car accident. Oh, that's a great parallel. Okay, good. Okay. So I think we're all on the same page about when you should buy your travel insurance. Let's talk about basic terminology. You mentioned trip interruption. What terminology do people need to know about and what does this stuff mean? So actually trip interruption and trip cancellation, those two coverages go hand in hand. And that's actually the biggest portion of your premium, believe it or not. Your biggest portion of your premium is for those two things, which is what could happen not on your trip, but what could happen before your trip that you would have to cancel. And now they're going to have to pay you money because you canceled your trip. So that's one of your biggest portions. So let's define what is trip cancellation versus trip interruption. Well, trip cancellation means that you have to cancel the trip because of a covered loss, whatever that loss would be. Not just because you decide, I don't want to travel on this anymore, or I'm nervous. And you have a legit reason, like there could be a death, there could be sickness, illness. So depending on what the coverage on that policy is and what it says. But trip cancellation basically is you cancel the trip before the trip started. Now, if someone got sick and that's a covered reason, would they have to provide proof that they saw a doctor? Yeah, the doctor's going to have to, they're going to ask for a doctor's note. So it can't just be, I felt sick, I didn't go on the cruise. Now there is a coverage for that. I'll talk about that in a second. But trip cancellation means you canceled before the trip. So let's just say you paid $5,000 for a trip and you had a covered loss, they'll give you back the 5,000, reimburse you for that. Now, if you did trip interruption, your trip already started. So you already flew your flight, maybe you're on the cruise already. And now you became, you had an eye infection, you can't see, you got to get off at the next port and send you home. Now there's another trip, now there's another flight involved, there may be some medical costs. So that fee for cancellation, plus all these other fees a little bit more. So lots of trip interruption is actually more coverage than the trip cancellation because there's more costs because you actually already got the trip started. But it's identical except trip cancellation before you start the trip, trip interruptions after you start the trip. Do they usually bundle cancellation and interruption into, okay. So your travel agent might say to you, hey, do you want trip cancellation and trip interruption? And those two things are going to add to the overall cost, but they're probably sold together? Yes, they are sold together. Okay. Super good to know. This actually leads to the annual policy. A lot of people don't realize that the annual policy doesn't include trip cancellation and interruption on some policies. And so sometimes you'll see a lot less when it comes to annual policies and that's because they take out the cancellation interruption. Now, some companies have it. So you have to take a look. If the premium is like super low, check to see if cancellation interruption is included. I remember when you, I actually came to Ben and this is how we became close friends. I came to Ben because I needed to buy an annual policy. And I was watching his Instagram and I was like, I need help. I do not know how to do this. Right. And so Ben told me, he's like, okay, here's your policy. You need to know that when you go on each trip, you can log into your insurance portal and you can add cancellation and interruption, but it's not built in necessarily to your, it's not baked into the annual policy. And that's common, right? And that's how we keep the price low. It depends. So some companies have it and it's baked into the policy and it's going to be higher. Some of the annual premiums are lower. When the annual premiums are lower, it usually means it's not included. Okay. Got it. Sounds good. But with an annual policy, what are some common inclusions like medical and things like that? Yes. Usually you'll find, you know, here's the interesting about medical and that's the other part. So if you look at trip travel insurance, it's kind of broken into two parts. One is kind of the sunk costs that you had for the actual trip, non-medical related. It's all call it the non-medical part of it. And then there's the medical part, which is, it'll pay for the doctors, the hospitalization, medication, things like that. Actually, the medical part of it Sherry is actually very low costs compared to the rest of the non-medical Sherry, because you know, the United States has a very high, we as, you know, Americans at US, North Americans, we're used to this high cost of medical care. When we go overseas, it's a lot less expensive many times, as you probably know. And so when we're going overseas, the reimbursement, the cost is lower. In fact, I find that my clients who come to America and buy insurance, their medical costs for their insurance policy is a lot higher than when we go overseas. Wow. Very interesting. That's something that we shouldn't skimp on because the medical part is good for us. It'll get coverage and peace of mind. And then number two, it usually will come together in like a more comprehensive insurance. And by the way, if you have a credit card, which is fantastic, they don't include the medical. So that's the thing to be aware of as well. Okay, good. I want to talk about that in a few minutes. Another question for you, a terminology question, because you were talking about medical and we're, you know, kind of going through the basics today. What is medical evacuation insurance and what does that mean and when might we need that? You know, so medical evacuation is interesting. So the idea is you're in a place where maybe you need to be airlifted or you need to, they need to get you out of, you know, you're in a remote area where there's no hospital or medical facility to take care of you there. And so they need to kind of get you on a plane and get you to the nearest closest hospital that can take care of your condition. And that may not be the island you're on. And so with that, that is called, you know, medical evacuation. There are policies specific to just doing that. Like, you know, you've probably heard of Medivac. There is certain programs that do that. Now, if you have a policy that includes that, that's great. Maybe a hundred thousand, some of them are a million coverage. It depends on what kind you buy. One thing that sometimes people get, one thing that sometimes people get concerned about is that they may have medical evacuation assistance. That's not medical evacuation. It's just assistance. I mean, you can call them and they can help organize it, but you don't actually have medical assistance. Yeah. It's just like assistance is different than actually having the coverage. Whoa. Okay. Friends. Did you hear that? That is a major pitfall. Watch out. Know the difference between medical evacuation coverage and medical evacuation assistance where they're like, yeah, we'll help you on the phone, but you're paying that $50,000 helicopter to get you. You know, it's funny because even there are even places where you're within the United States, by the way, where you're remote, like think about being in Alaska where there's no roadways necessarily. There's some Alaskan ports of call where you can only access those places by boat or by plane. And if you became ill in one of those places and the medical system there wasn't enough to cover, you could even be within the United States and still need to get home and need medical evacuation coverage. That's right. Okay. Wow. They have companies that just specifically focus on the medical evac and some people buy policies just for that alone. Would you say as the older we get, the more we need medical evac coverage? I think the risk definitely gets higher as you get older. So I think that's a natural thing. When you look at life insurance, we look at medical insurance, all those things come into play. So if we're dealing with our health, you know, and sometimes people are traveling on cruises because they don't want to be active. They want something more sedentary and more quiet. And when you think of it from that perspective, they may be even coming on board with pre-existing conditions as we speak. So being on a boat, being away, not having cell phone coverage sometimes, and those things can all come into play. And it would make sense for most people, I would say most people to travel with it. I mean, I'll give you an example, Shay. I use certain credit cards just because they give me more insurance. Even if I lose points on it, at least I have peace of mind. Okay. Sounds good. And I can't wait. I feel like the credit card portion of this is going to be so good, but I do have one final question to round out our annual policy chat. When is an annual policy right for someone? Like how many cruises a year? Based on what kind of coverage? When would you look at someone and say, okay, let's stop having you buy individual policies. It is now time for you to branch out. Who would that person be and what situation would they be in? You know, it's a really tough question there, but I would say anytime you're doing at least maybe two or three trips a year, especially prepaid cruise, I would really start considering looking at an annual policy and making sure you have the right coverages. More importantly than how much you're paying, I would make sure looking at the make sure that you have the right coverages that are appropriate for you. I think that's important. You know, I don't want to leave without also giving somebody an idea of something called CFAR. Cancel for any reason insurance. CFAR. Cancel for any reason insurance. That type of insurance does require you to buy the insurance policy within sometimes, depending on the company, seven days, 14 days of the time you make your first deposit. And if you do that, you'll be covered up to 75% of the trip that you're insuring, basically 75% of it. So if you decide for any reason you do want to cancel and not go, you can. Now you do need to cancel a certain period of time depending on the company. It could be a week, it could be two weeks before, but if you decide to cancel, you can cancel for any reason. So you don't have to have like a covered loss. You just don't want to go. Keep in mind the premiums for that is much higher, but I find that 20% of my clients decide that CFAR is good for them. Got it. So cancel for any reason is different from trip cancellation insurance in that it is that any reason truly is any reason. No doctor's note, no covered reason, no, you know, if there's a death in the family, you don't have to indicate that. This can be, I decided I don't want to go on this trip. Yeah. And so, but, but people cannot necessarily expect 100% reimbursement, but some high percentage of the trip will be covered for CFAR and you must buy it in a certain time. You must buy it almost right away within the first week, depending on the company. If you already put your deposit, your first payment down and you waited a month, you're probably not going to be able to get CFAR at that point. The risk is too high for them. They want to lower their risk of just because you decide you don't want to go on the trip. Sure. You can buy it within a certain period of time. But if you're thinking about getting one, you should get one right away. Okay, fantastic. So that that's great that you mentioned that because that's kind of goes back to those basic terminology things. Are there any other insurance terminologies that you can think of that people need to know about? I think we've done a pretty good job of covering most of them. Well, one of them that I think most likely will happen or the one that most people will really run into is something called trip delay. And trip delay is usually coverage that's covered in all policies. And that means that if your flight gets delayed, it depends on the policy now, it's hours, 12 hours overnight. Okay. If you have one of those, that means you're delayed enough that maybe you need a hotel room, that you need to eat, that you need to pay now for an Uber or car ride or one of those types of transportation, food, toiletries. Maybe you're without your clothing. Maybe you're without your toiletries. Trip delay will cover you and give you a certain dollar amount depending on the policy. It could be 200, it could be $500 for every day of the delay. Hopefully you're not delayed more than one, more than that five or that six hours or those 12 hours. But depending on that, that comes really, really handy because with that coverage, you could be able to go book a hotel. And you may be wondering, some of your listeners may be wondering, well, if the flight got delayed that much, doesn't the airline owe me a hotel room or food vouchers? And the answer is, it depends. If it's within the mechanical breakdown, it was due to the airline, then yeah, sure, they will give you one. But what happens when it's weather? What happens when there's a flight delay and then they divert you to another because they can't land because unsafe or they can't take off because of the weather. In those cases, the airlines don't owe you anything. And it's an act of God. So that's where you can still go use your insurance. Interesting. Is trip delay pretty commonly included in a basic policy? It is, but the way that it looks like is that it's different to every company. So some of them say 12 hours delay and 12 hours is a hard one to meet. So you won't get that coverage. So some of them, the good ones, the good ones will say six hours. And I have found some policies that give you three hour delay. Okay. Jeez, I've had a lot of three hour delays at the Dallas Fort Worth Airport. I'll tell you what. My friend goes and buys a bunch of Lululemon when that happens. Where does she go to buy Lululemon in Dallas? Because he's like, you know, I don't have my bag. I checked my bag. He can't go to the hotel. Or, you know, and he'll make a case with the adjuster. See, this is the thing about the adjuster now. When you're dealing with the claim, you're kind of like, well, I needed this for my whatever I needed to. I get it. I get it. Yeah. They're like, spend a couple hundred dollars on leggings. I'm going to claim it. Okay. That's fantastic. So we did pretty good here. We've got trip delay. We've got CFAR, medical evacuation. Anything else terminology wise? I do want to make sure that people are also aware that the cost of insurance is going to determine by what age you are. The older you are, it's going to increase in cost because of that. Also, some of the states don't offer certain coverages. Some they do. So they will ask you your age. They'll ask you what state you're at. They'll ask you what countries you're visiting. That's important to know too, because obviously you're heading to Afghanistan or Israel. There's some coverages that they will either won't give it to you or they're going to be a higher cost and they'll come into play as well. Oh, wow. So higher risk countries visited, they have complete control over that. You can't just assume you're covered wherever you go. Yeah. Okay. That is so interesting. So you talked about states, talked about where you're going, and you briefly touched on age. And so one of the reasons you and I were having a pre-chat here, one of the reasons you can't ask your friend how much they paid for their policy is because there's so many variables, right? And age is one of those? Age is one of the biggest ones. A 30-year-old is going to pay a lot less than someone who's 55 years old. Exactly. Whenever I buy a policy for my family, I'm in my 50s, my husband's in his 60s, and my son is 16. So my son's is always like $29, $45. And my husband and I pay like hundreds, right? So yeah, it makes perfect sense though. It's that risk factor. His rates will probably be the same until he turns 25. Okay. It's a lot better than what we're going to have to pay when he learns how to drive and we have to buy his car insurance. Now that's a whole different... Because they're the highest risk, right? I've been in insurance now 30 years. This is like my professional background is insurance. And I work with a lot of the new tech companies that are going into it. The new tech out there... And your folks haven't even heard of this. I'll just tell you this. For the last 7 or 10 years, they've been doing what they call telematics. They're tracking where the car goes and how people are driving. And they're going to do a new thing. And I think the new thing that's going to happen is going to be video. Okay. Video monitoring will be the next thing. In rental cars? In all cars. What? I think it's going to be... Well, you're going to have to approve it, but there are going to be companies that are going to come out that are going to be specifically designed with video monitoring for a couple reasons. Number one, it's perfect in a liability situation. When there's a crash, if there's video of it, then you have proof. It's so easy. You don't have to dispute and people tell their own side of the story. You're going to have a video image. But more important than that... And this is why it's important for your son and for all those who have younger drivers. I think the future of it also with the video monitoring, they're going to realize that certain young drivers are actually safe drivers and certain are terrible drivers. Regardless of age, regardless of age, bad drivers are bad drivers. Whether they're 17 or 37, they drive the same way. If they drive reckless, they're going to drive reckless. That's going to change and it's going to actually help that young person who drives well. Their rates are going to come down, I think, long-term. We've never had this before as an insurance industry in the history of insurance. We're going to have new data now that we've never had before. I actually think young people are going to benefit from it. Wow. This new technology is being spearheaded or lobbied for by the insurance industry? There are insured tech companies right now that are coming to the play. I think what's going to happen is the bigger players, the companies that you and I know, most likely will use these small companies to show proof of concept, they'll probably adopt it because Gen Z and I think this next Gen Alpha, as they come up and they get older, they don't trust insurance companies like they... Actually, forget it. It's not like anyone's ever trusted insurance companies. I've been in 30 years now. I think they're pushing for more using the data that we have now, the tech that we have now, that we've never had before. Why are insurance companies not applying that into rates? Why are they not applying that? Why are we still using old proxies like, what is your gender? What is your marital status? We use that. Marital status. If you're married, you pay lower rates than if you're single. Come on. That's just bizarre. Females get better rates than males. Weird. Just weird. They use credit scores to determine. That is terrifying. That is terrifying. That's how it's determined right now. Wow. Oh, man. Okay. It looks like the person has no credit and that's why they pay more. Oh my gosh. Crazy. All right. I know you and I could do tangents all day, every day with this stuff because it's so fascinating. This is what I love about Ben's community and his master class and his groups is that they go in deep on this stuff, like hour-long nighttime calls afterward where they're like, okay, really digging in. Okay. But shifting gears, the other things that I want to cover today are overspending, under covering, and then trusting your credit card policy. Let's start with overspending. How do we know if we're spending too much on a policy? What should we look for? I actually don't think that's a problem. I don't think most people buy enough coverage a lot of times because they're going strictly on price. In fact, I think most people don't realize what they have covered for. I think that's going to be the biggest thing. Your premiums are going to be paying what your premiums are because of the age you are and what you're looking for. I think it's important to say, number one, do you have the trip cancellation, trip interruption? Is that there? Do you have the medical part of it? Now, there are some companies out there that will allow you, if you want to reduce your premiums, if you're concerned about I'm paying too much, I would say, well, maybe you already have coverage somewhere else. Maybe you have credit card insurance that will cover your trip cancellation. And then therefore, all you need to buy extra is your medical portion because your credit card doesn't cover the medical. So you could reduce your premiums by looking to see if you have the right credit card and then thus buying a medical policy separately. Got it. What are the biggest areas, conversely, where people undercover themselves? And I think we've kind of covered that over the course of it, but in general? Yeah, I think there's a couple things that people, like I mentioned up earlier about CIFAR, they undercover, meaning that they think they're covered, but they're not covered. Like, you know what? They say there's going to be a war or there is something going on, and then you're just concerned. There's nothing going on, but you're concerned there is, and then you want to cancel and you want to think that your insurance companies are going to cover that, and they won't. And you're going to need to have, that's not a covered loss. You're going to need to have CIFAR insurance that's covered for any, cancel for any reason insurance. So I think those things are things I think people need to be aware of. But trip cancellation is important, trip interruption, trip delay. There are also medical coverages that you can have. Like, for example, I know we're not going to get into the credit card part of it, but one of the credit cards, like the Chase Sapphire Reserve, actually gives you $2,000 of medical. So if you need to go see a doctor, you got stitches or something like that, they'll cover up to $2,000 on it. That's covering your credit card already. Yeah, so kind of basics medical. Yeah, some really basic one. So I really like using that cover, Chase has a really good one that they cover on that one for the Chase Sapphire Reserve. And it covers also on the Ritz-Carlton card if you have that. So some of these premium, these top tier premium cards, sometimes people are kind of like, no, never going to pay for annual premium, but you're going to pay for policy. So maybe you want to get the coverage that get the right card to that. Yeah, good. That's a perfect segue, because now it's time to talk about this. So you've kind of started us off with the credit card and insurance. It's so true. People often think because I have a credit card that has some travel insurance, that everything is covered. But like you said, most of them do not cover your medical. Some have a clause for it. Like you just said, Chase Sapphire Reserve, right? Not preferred reserve, has a $2,000. What about other elite cards? Like let's say like American's Advantage City MasterCard, or what are some of the ones that do offer it? If you are, maybe you play in that sandbox where you've got like the ultra premium cards with the $500 to $800 annual fees, are those ones different and what do they cover? Yeah. So depending on the coverage, or depending on the card that we're talking about, one of the ones I really recommend is the Chase Sapphire Reserve. One of the reasons why I say that is that they're primary. A lot of credit cards will have the coverage, but they're secondary. Meaning like if you have your own medical coverage already at home, or you have a travel policy, they say, we will make up the difference if the first policy runs out of coverage, or if they decline or deny, they will come into play. Which is one of the reasons why I actually don't have people get or focus on the Amex Platinum, is most of the coverage on that one also requires, by the way, on the Amex Platinum, they require that you book a round trip. Chase Sapphire doesn't require that. Depending on how you book your trip, you don't have the two one ways, or if you just don't know which way you're coming back yet, and you're going for a longer period of time, just keep that in mind. Also, by the way, a lot of the credit card companies also say that your trip can't go beyond 30 days. You need to get a new policy, or you got to get another policy, and you got to be back in the country. Just be aware, there are some things out there. Look at your policy, just like if you bought a car, or you bought an appliance that you're going to go use, and you need to use a warranty. I would encourage people to take a look at those kind of things, because there are some stipulations there, but they are very, very good. I think the reserve card has a lot of the coverage that you're looking for. For example, accidental death and dismemberment, there's coverages that a lot of the cards cover that you may not think they do. Now, with these coverages, I'm assuming you have to book the trip with that card to get the coverage? Yes. Every element, the cruise, the flight, the hotel, everything? How does that work? Yeah, they usually want you to book whatever you want covered. Let's say, for example, if you're going to book your cruise with it, and you want to get reimbursed for your cruise, you're going to have to book with that card. You're not going to be able to book a cruise with your card, and then book another card for the airfare tickets, and think you're going to be able to come back to the card that you didn't book with. I would make sure I would use one card to book your travel. I know for those who like to earn points and miles and meet the minimum spend, and I've seen this happen too, people will say, well, Ben, I used this other card because I had just signed up for it. I need to meet the minimum spend, and I did it. In those cases, if that's what you're going to do, then I would definitely buy an outside secondary travel policy, and not have to worry about which credit card you're using. But if you can use one credit card just for travel, and that be the card that be with the right coverages, like the Chase Sapphire Reserve. Sapphire Preferred does have coverage too, by the way. The Preferred, okay. It's a little bit lower. The Preferred is $95 annual fee, versus $7.95 on the reserve. I saw that the reserve fee is going to $7.95. Yeah. I have that card, and I'm trying to weigh out if I'm going to keep it right now, because I've switched over to the American Airlines ecosystem, and I use my Citi MasterCard because I want to hit executive platinum, right? So I don't usually book my travel with my Chase Sapphire Reserve. So I'm having to ask myself, is it worth the lounge access, priority pass, the Chase lounges, the travel credit? I mean, there's a lot of benefits, but 800 bucks? Yeah, it's a lot. Here's the thing. My annual fee renews October 1st. Anyone who gets the card, I'm sorry, anyone who has a renewal after October 26th will pay the new fee. If you have a renewal before October 26th, you're going to get the old fee. I don't know, Sherry, if you know what a renewal fee is. Mine's July. I think it's like now. So I think I'm pretty sure it's, I think I'm going to be okay this year. Oh, you're going to get it. We, you and I, are going to get a free look. Okay, a free look. I love that. We're going to pay the old fee, but we're going to get all the new perks starting October 26th. And see how you like it, right? And see how you like it. And so for us, I don't think we should cancel. I think we should, because they're going to give, here's the best part of it with the new perks. They're giving us now $250. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. $500 of hotel credit that you can split 250, 250. Then they're going to give us like another $300 in food credit in a restaurant that we've never had this before. And you go like at the more higher end restaurants in the bigger cities. So it can't be applied for everyone, but if you live or you're traveling to a bigger city, make a reservation. Some of these nice, some of these restaurants are like highly acclaimed, critically acclaimed restaurants in San Francisco and LA and Chicago and Miami, New York. If you use any of those ones, you're going to get twice a year, you're going to get 150 to go eat out. So Chase is paying the bill for 150. So you're going to make, you know, you'll pay out five 50 bucks out of your, out of pocket. They'll pay one 50. That's great. And then the hotel part of it, I mean, there's going to be what they call edits hotel, edit hotel, Amex, Amex is buying hotel and resorts. They're higher end five-star hotels. So they're going to let us use the credit a hundred and I'm sorry, $250 for two nights stay. It gotta be two nights stay, but $50 credit. So if the room is 250, 300, let's say for example, 300, always 300, 300, that's 600. They're going to take off 250, but here's the thing. They're going to give you to a hundred dollar welcome amenity that you anywhere there on the property for dinner. And then they're also going to give you breakfast for two and a rate of late checkout. So it's pretty great deal. Not a bad deal. If you were able to use it, my challenge is people are not going to be aware and they're not aware of the perk and they just kind of turn away. But yeah, it's worked for Amex. Chase is taking a page out of their playbook. I'm saying I like the change, but it's okay for five 50 this first year. Let's try it out and let's see how it works. Yeah. I'm with you on that. I stated one of the edit properties in Miami last year when I was going for a conference, I had enough reserve points where I booked the whole thing on the edit and Miami beach, South beach is very expensive. So I thought, you know what? Rather than doing what I normally do, which is I cheap out and I stay at a Hampton Inn. I was like, no, I'm going to go through some points here and get the edit. And I stayed at the SLS South beach. And even then, just because I booked with the edit, this wasn't a credit card perk. It was more like it was a credit card perk, but it wasn't the one where you're saying you're paying the annual fee. So you get it. They did. They gave me the free breakfast every morning and it was a very nice breakfast sit down beautiful. And I think I had a hundred dollar credit at the property. It was very nice. And those hotels do tend to be beautiful. They're five star hotels. And if people like boutique properties, they have those there too. You know, like if you go to Scottsdale, there's an on dots property over there, which is fantastic. And you know, you can be able to get all the perks. It's like they treat you like an elite status holder without having ever elite status your first time walking in. So it's something that I think Chase, Amex, they're moving more toward that because this is their own booking channel. They make a commission when you make a booking through them. So they're trying to encourage you to use it more. I see. That's so interesting. Well, I mean, you, we couldn't have a conversation with Ben without going down into points and miles. Right. But I think, I think that we've covered everything I had on my list with the travel insurance. Ben, is there anything else for trip insurance, travel insurance, cruise travel insurance, anything you want people to know? Yeah, I think, um, like I've worked with many companies. One of the ones I work with, uh, Wanderwell is there are companies out there that do a very good job of advocating for you. Some, some of the biggest challenges I think people have when they're thinking about buying travel insurance is like, Oh no, I gotta get the receipts. Oh, I gotta go. They don't want to go through the whole process of it, or it's just like a big challenge to them. A lot of the newer companies nowadays, they're, they have advocates for you. Well, they'll help kind of help guide you put the paperwork together, what you need. So I think travel insurance as in general, they're trying to be better, but I will say this, and I want everybody to be aware. Every policy is different. You got to take a look at the policy, see what they're offering you. I know it's nice, easy to use it. Just click a button, one, two, three, and be done with it. Right. Do that. But when the time comes, you're making a claim, you're going to realize, uh, they're, they're not all created equal. And it's hard because we don't necessarily always know what's going to go wrong, right? On a, on a trip. So we don't always know what we're looking for. I can't say I might need trip delay. Cause how am I supposed to know if my trip is going to be delayed? Right? So you just have to think what are the most likely things to happen to you based on maybe your airport, maybe, maybe based on the time of year that you're cruising or flying, are you going to be in a hurricane season, a storm season? Maybe you have aging, ill parents, and you might need to think about the fact that you might need a CFAR because anything could happen. I have one of our community members messaged me recently and said, you know, we're now adding CFAR to everything because both of our parents are at a point where we have to fly home in a moment's notice. So you've got to be just real with yourself, talk to your, you know, your insurance provider, your travel advisor, and let them help you. Ben, where can our community find you? Yeah, they can find me on bensbigdeal.com. They can also find me on Instagram at Ben's big deal or Facebook or Tik TOK. And I'm trying to get my YouTube going on Ben's big deal as well. Awesome. If they have questions about, or if they want to inquire about getting a policy and they have some questions, I'm more than happy to help them as well. I do want to lead one more thing. Sure. There's a, there's an issue with luggage. Sometimes people get their luggage lost. Okay. And there's lost luggage insurance, and then there's loss. And then there's kind of like luggage delay. Okay. Oh, like there's a difference between loss and delay. Loss means you lost everything. I mean, they could owe you $10,000 on the policy. If you lost everything, most times people just have a delay. So if you have a delay on your luggage, no matter if you got it from the credit card, whether you buy a policy, it's secondary. I just want to let you know, whether you have a chase or not, it's always secondary. So sometimes people will go, Oh, my luggage delayed three hours, six hours. It's not here. I'm going to go on and buy a bunch of stuff. I would make sure you do this too. Before you do that, I would make sure you file a claim with the airline and say, I'm filing a claim for lost luggage and you have paperwork because they're going to need that. And then some companies like even chase involved, many of the bigger companies too, they're going to want it to decline. Like the airline is responsible for your luggage, by the way. Okay. When you check your bags in and you, and then they lose it or they lost it, they're responsible for it. You really should. The carriers really want you to submit it to the airline for reimbursement first. So when you say secondary means you, you submitted your claim to the airline for one reason or another, they denied it. Yes. And if it's denied and you got to deny, then the insurance company is going to process it and then reimburse you. If you qualify. I mean, usually by that point you, you will, I mean, they, you know, they didn't deliver on time. I think there's usually enough proof when the bad, because there's usually a claim you have to fill out when you leave the airline that says here, here's where we're going to send it to. Like, where do we find, where do we send your luggage to? If you does, by the way, you don't need to come back and grab your luggage. They will pay for delivering it to your hotel, wherever you are or your port, your hotel, wherever you are, it has to meet up with you. Right. I think it does. Yeah. Oh gosh. I'm so scared to check bags because of that. I am terrified. So anytime I check a bag, my team has checked bag team check bag because my wife needs to have her air drew up her, her blow dryer, her shoe, all this stuff. I love it. Well, you guys too, when you go to Ben's Instagram page, know that there's a lot of free resources there for you to where you can just go and peruse his Instagram story highlights and his reels. So much information for you on anything from TSA pre-check to getting rewarded for being a homeowner, Japan. I mean, you guys literally everything he's always, when Ben travels, he turns the mic and the camera on and sometimes you'll even get to see his very talented and smart daughter who comes on and does cute little clips. I always love seeing your daughter on your Instagram stories. She is amazing. Thank you so much. She's natural. She's going to be bigger than me when she grows up. She's amazing, man. I tell you, she only going to want to be flying first class. Just kidding. Oh, Ben. Thank you so much. It's funny. It's so funny. She was just telling me the other day, she was just like, I was telling her, like, she was watching a review from like another, another airline travel blogger. And then he, she's going through all the spots, like how to prep. Like she asked me the other day, she's like, why does a flight attendant have to tell you how to use the, all the buttons on the, uh, on, you know, in the seat. And she's like, I love just pressing it myself and finding out. I said, Nyle, there's people who come on board. This is the first time they had to explain to him. And she's looking at me in wilderness. She's like, okay, but that doesn't apply to me. Oh, I love it. Well, and it's too, it's kids. Kids are so, they're sponges. They learn so differently than we did back when we were kids. Cause they've been, they've been brought up in this age of technology and buttons and screens and they just know. Oh, absolutely. Such a great conversation. Thank you so much for being here with me. And Ben, I hope we get to do it again. We'll have to think of another, um, another topic that adds value to the audience. Absolutely. Thank you so much. You bet. All right, friends until next time, we'll see you on the high seas. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks for listening to cruise tips, TV, unplugged. If you like our show and want to know more, check us out at cruise tips, tv.com. You can also find us on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram by searching cruise tips TV. We'd love if you'd leave us a review, wherever you're listening to this podcast, subscribe to the show and tune in next week. Until next time, we'll see you on the high seas.