Travel Insurance: Necessary or Inflated Expense?

When booking foreign travel with an experienced travel agent, you'll likely be encouraged to buy travel insurance.

It's literally pennies on the dollar of your major trip, so the added expense isn't much.

But too many travelers ignore this vital coverage thinking, "Nothing will happen to me." But then it does. Travel insurance covers more than just canceled trips or delays - it covers major emergencies.

You can have a heart attack anywhere. You might return from a peaceful nature hike only to find the capital city under siege from a revolutionary faction. Do you think this is far fetched?

Okay, consider this real situation.

In 2004, supermodel Petra Nemcova and her photographer boyfriend were enjoying a lush island resort off of Thailand when a tsunami hit with little warning.

She barely survived. He died. And many thousands of tourists and locals were displaced.

If a natural disaster happened while you were traveling to a distant land, how would you get home?

If you were injured, an air ambulance would cost upwards of $25,000 to $50,000 to bring you home. How would you pay for it?  Or, the question might be - could you pay for it at all?

Now you see why a paying few dollars for travel insurance could make a big difference in providing medical care or disaster evacuation without you having to mortgage your home just to get you back to safety.