I would always buy it when travelling outside my own country

I have never bought travel insurance (30-some trips outside my own country). I guess I would/should consider it if it was a particularly long or expensive trip for whatever reason. So far (knock wood) I have never booked a trip I have not taken as planned.

I bought it for a trip with my mother (who is in her 70s) on a recent trip to Europe, as her primary insurer is Medicare. And I recently bought it for a fairly complicated three week itinerary to southeast Asia.

Travel insurance is absolutely essential especially if one is travelling to a country such as the USA where medical attention is prohibitively expensive. My advice, if you travel regularly, is to take out a "Frequent Flyer" policy (eg One Cover) which offers continual, rolling travel insurance offering you and your partner a wide range of cover in every country (including the USA and travel within our homeland, Australia). Its fantastic and, in the long run, a lot less expensive than taking out independent insurance for separate trips. My husband and I travel overseas five or six times a year and we have "peace of mind" knowing that we always have good, secure home-based cover which enables us to be able to just "take off" on a trip at a moment's notice.

it always pays - although I have never had to use it for myself, the peace of mind pays for it. My father died very suddenly years ago. The trip insurance that he had bought completely paid back his estate for the expensive trip to China that he was due to go on in a weeks time. The process was very easy.

And, when traveling to the Caribbean in late summer/early fall, get it with a "cancel for any reason rider" in case of hurricanes.

I used to buy travel insurance for several years - only for overseas trip as sort of a medical insurance in case something happens.

but I stopped doing that in recent years, simply thinking that "it won't happen to me".

As for canceling my trips? I suppose it can happen, but since I'm a budget traveler, my trips tend to be fairly cheap. So, I'll only be getting my plane ticket cost back and not much else, since most hotel bookings allow you to cancel up until 24 hours prior. And even for plane tickets, as long as I'm willing to pay a fee, I can get the rest of the credit back.

Of course, if I'm paying thousands of dollars for a cruise or African safari, that's a different story.

While we don't bother with travel insurance if traveling within N. America, Australia or Europe, but we always have elsewhere. We've analyzed our situation and realized we weren't always buying what we needed.

We realized that because we never book package deals and rarely anything that required a prepayment, many of the features of our past insurance purchases were pointless. The airlines may have charged a relatively small change fee (compared to the price of the insurance); and the type of mid-range to budget independently owned hotels and guesthouses we like generally allow a cancellation within 24 hours. Lost luggage - we don't carry anything valuable that isn't carry on anyway. Collision/waiver insurance is provided by using a major credit card in our case.

So we've now focused exclusively on policies that provide medical care and evacuation, trading all the other features for better coverage in this area.

I always suggest that those that want travel insurance of any kind to go to the www.insuremytrip.com and review all the various policies and coverages that are listed on that good website. There is a toll free number one can call also if they have any questions.

I only bought it once and it was the one time I needed it. A very expensive airline ticket to South Africa and a deposit for a safari. I had to cancel and I got it all back except for the fee I paid to insuremytrip.com
Well worth it.

I do, and it's relatively cheap for the peace of mind. Some insurance covers CDW on car rentals, which really helps in Ireland. Medical coverage, medical evacuation, trip cancellation - since I tend to buy cheap, but non-refundable airfare, these are definitely helpful.

Our health insurance doesn't cover us out of the country, so we always buy a medical policy for overseas trips. We've never insured an actual trip though.

If you are on Medicare, you absolutely must have at least a medical policy. Medicare will reimburse you but will not cover anything at the time. Other times to buy: If you're going to any place where there is some physical risk (such as doing a lot of hiking) and might have to be rescued, when you've paid a lot of money for a tour or a cruise, or when you have any chronic health problems.

There is a tremendous difference in policy costs. I have found that some tour companies will charge 10% of the cost of the trip. Go to insuremytrip.com for comparisons. I usually get the best deals from American Express or through USAA, my insurance carrier. They run about 5% of the trip cost.

I started buying trip insurance a couple of years ago for our annual Maui trips. We always go in Feb. and since we buy the cheapest (non-refundable, non-transferable) tickets, I finally decided spending $60 was better than fretting for 2 weeks over whether or not we'd get a blizzard the day we're supposed to fly out of Iowa.

But I only buy insurance to cover travel costs, lost luggage, flight change fees - no medical, as I'm fortunate enough to have very good medical that covers us wherever we travel.