The Best Way To Stay Safe When Traveling With Kids: Travel Medical Insurance

After traveling the world with my family for several years, I have to admit it: my family has been remarkably lucky when it comes to staying healthy during our travels. We’ve managed to take our kids to more than 15 countries (and counting) over a period of several years without needing any more than a handful of relatively inexpensive doctor’s visits. 

However, during that same timeframe, we’ve also seen close friends get sick or injured during their travels. We’ve seen unpredictable events, like earthquakes, strike countries where people we know were staying. And, unfortunately, we’ve seen a global pandemic that affected literally everyone in the world, to some degree or other. 

All this points to one undeniable fact. No matter how safe your destination might be, you never know what might happen. But, you definitely can make sure your family is as prepared as possible for when it does.   

What is Travel Medical Insurance?

Travel medical insurance is a supplemental insurance plan that is meant to protect you from unexpected medical costs during your travels. A lot of insurance plans don’t offer medical coverage outside of your home country, and travel medical insurance is intended to fill that gap. 

Travel medical insurance is not intended to be used in your home country. Nor is it intended to cover medical expenses like routine check-ups, dental, or vision appointments, as these are typically not emergency-related things. Though, some more comprehensive travel health plans (like Nomad Health by SafteyWing) do cover dental visits, in some cases! Just be sure to check and double-check your coverage details for when your trip qualifies and when it does not.

Some travel medical insurance policies also cover things like trip interruptions caused by car accidents or political upheaval, or even evacuation due to natural disasters or other unexpected causes. These aren’t things that you can plan for, so being covered in the unlikely event that your vacation spot suddenly becomes a war zone would be a huge relief.    

Why is it important for families to purchase Travel Medical Insurance?

While travel medical insurance is a good choice for any traveler, it’s particularly useful for families who would otherwise be paying for evacuation or medical expenses on a per person basis for each member of their family.

If you’ve ever traveled with kids, you know just how quickly things can add up when you have a kid or two in tow!  

Of course, spending money on something that you’re hoping not to use can feel wasteful, but you can think of it more as buying peace of mind. Yes, there’s always the chance that something might happen while you’re in a new country far from home, but if it does, having coverage means that you’ll be able to get the help you need without needing to dip into savings. 

Which Travel Medical Insurance should my family get?

There are several travel medical insurance providers out there, each with their own pros and cons. It can be quite tricky to pick the one that works best for your family.

However, if you haven’t picked it up from the hints I dropped above, I personally would recommend using Nomad Insurance by SafetyWing. I do, of course, encourage you to do some shopping around to see if you can find something that works better for your family, but I think you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better value. Especially when you take in the ways that SafetyWing sets itself apart from other providers! 

How is Nomad Insurance by SafetyWing different from other Travel Medical Insurance companies?

There are an overwhelming number of travel medical insurance providers out there, and, honestly, it can be pretty hard to tell a lot of them apart. SafetyWing has a few great things going for them that makes them the one I recommend.  

Ease of use

First and foremost, Nomad Insurance is super simple to use, from start to finish. SafetyWing makes it incredibly easy to get started, no matter where you are in the world, and makes it easy to make claims. That means less time on the phone with your provider, and ultimately, more money in your pocket, faster.

Starting Service

Many travel insurance companies come with a ton of hoops to jump through. You need to know the duration of your trip, including specific countries that you’ll be visiting. And if you change your mind? That’s not covered. And of course, you need to buy your insurance within 15 days of buying your ticket, or it’s a no-go!

Nomad Insurance isn’t like that. Instead, signing up is as simple as putting in your information and clicking subscribe. You can purchase it for a specific trip length, like the other guys, but you can also just set it up to be a recurring subscription and let it renew every 28 days. It covers you across almost every country in the world, and you don’t have to keep them apprised of every little change in your itinerary.  

As someone who doesn’t know what country I’ll be in next month, that is the key feature. 

Making a Claim

And when it comes time to make a claim?  SafetyWing makes that simple to do, too!

I have not personally done it myself, so I’ll let the reviews on their Trustpilot page speak for me here. Several different reviews on Trustpilot speak to SafetyWing having a straightforward claims process. They are also lauded for being flexible, and easy to use. They also have several reviews stating that SafetyWing claims are speedy, which I personally love, as the last time I made a travel insurance claim (with a different company), it took nearly a year to get my money. 

You can check out all of SafetyWing’s Trustpilot reviews here.

Duration and location of Service

Another point in Nomad Insurance’s favor is that you can start your plan at any time, including after you’ve already left the country! 

As someone that spends most of the year traveling internationally, this is huge. With most comparatively priced providers, you have to purchase your plan before leaving your home country, and you are limited in the length of your trip. So, if I were to buy one of these plans, I would only be covered for the first 30-45 days of my trip before my coverage lapsed, and would have to return to America before I could renew it! 

SafetyWing, on the other hand, auto-renews their plans every month (28 days) unless you tell them not to, just like any other internet-based subscription. You don’t have to be in your home country to start. And you don’t need to return home to renew. 

This is literally the only provider I’ve found that actually allows nomadic families like ours to have travel medical insurance, long-term and with the ability to cross borders like we do. Bravo.

So, there you have it! 

Not only is it super simple to sign up for Nomad Insurance, but they work to make sure their claims process is as painless and streamlined as possible. And you can sign up from anywhere, rather than needing to buy your insurance before leaving your home country!       

Pricing

While ease of use is important, pricing is arguably the most important part of any travel medical insurance. After all, if you’re paying more for insurance than you would ever recover in covered costs, you aren’t actually doing yourself any favors. 

As of today (11/25/2023), Nomad Insurance would cost me a bit over $45 for 28 days of coverage. A quick internet search shows that there are several larger insurers that would provide Travel Medical Insurance for just a bit more than that, starting at $3/day, or $84 for 28 days, meaning Nomad Insurance is almost half the price. 

Not only that, but that other plan has a trip limit of 45 days. After that I would either have no coverage, or have to return to the States. Although to be fair, they do have a more comprehensive Worldwide International Insurance plan, for a low, low price of $179.40 per month! But that’s not Travel Medical Insurance. It’s Global Medical Coverage, which would be more similar to Nomad Health by SafetyWing, which starts at $123/month (as of 11/25/2023). 

Cool. Great. But there’s something else. I have kids. 

Listen (read?) close, because here is the kicker. Nomad Insurance includes 1 kid under 10 years old for each insured adult with their plan. Which means I can insure my entire family of 4 for almost the same price that it would cost to insure just me with the other guys. And I can do it for the whole year instead of for just a single trip. 

For my family, as of 11/25/2023	Nomad Insurance by SafetyWing	The Other Guys
Monthly price	$45.08	$84.00
Length of Trip	unlimited	45 days
Are kids included?	1/adult	lol
Price for family of 4	$90.16	$148.44

If you have more than 2 kids, the others won’t be included for free, but it’s still significantly less expensive than it would be with most other insurance providers.

This is a no-brainer. Still having doubts? Use the widget below to see how much Nomad Insurance would cost for you and your family!

Company Culture

Probably the most important part of how SafetyWing is different from other providers, and the entire reason that the above reasons make sense, is because Nomad Insurance is for nomads. 

SafetyWing gets nomads and the way we live life, in large part because a huge chunk of their staff are nomads. They live on the road, just like us. They travel to other countries for adventure and education. They work from the road. They live their entire lives overseas. And they want Travel Medical Insurance that actually makes sense for that lifestyle, because they’re living it, too.

I realize that choosing a service like insurance on the premise that the company is likable is probably not the wisest way to do it, but there is a lot to be said for choosing a company that you can trust. And I trust SafetyWing. 

Part of that is all the things I listed above, but part of it is because I’ve chatted with people who work there as part of the affiliate onboarding process. You could tell that they believed in SafetyWing and the things they’re working for. Things like encouraging people to see the world. To learn about other places and cultures. And to live a life of discovery. 

They are a company that believes in that. And they want people to do it safely. 

I like that. 

What services are offered by SafetyWing?