My husband and I are going to Maui in Dec. for our 25th anniversary. We'll be there for 9 days. I'm thinking we should get travel insurance, but my husband doesn't think we need it. Has anyone used CSA vacation rental insurance? How do we decide? Thanks in advance for any advice.

I have no idea what CSA is, but I do know one thing about insurance - It is priced in such a way that, on average, it pays the insurer. Which means, you pay more than what the odds say are that you'll cancel your trip.

But, if it would be an extreme hardship for you to lose the cost of your trip, or even more if you have reason to believe that you may have to cancel, it might be worth it.

Why do you think you should get it? Is there some reason you think you might not be able to take the trip?

We used CSA one time--that was fine. Whenever we get trip insurance I go to insuremytrip.com and get comparison rates, and we don't leave home without insurance. Last year we had to cancel a trip to the East Coast after I broke my shoulder, and TravelGuard paid up in good order.

my husband became ill, 4 days before our trip to Maui. A doctor's letter saved us from paying the full bill.
It's a comfort to have this.

I don't know about CSA, but we always get travel insurance for big trips. It really paid off for us once, when I was hospitalized just before we were scheduled to take off for trip to Turkey. The doctor's note enabled us to get our air fare refunded, but the insurance paid for all the the other prepaid stuff -- and that was a sizeable amount.

I rarely purchase insurance (trip to Egypt was exception). First, look at what you will or have prepaid and see if it is refundable - for example, hotels often are, but air generally is not. Then look at cost of insurance and see if you are willing to "self-insure" or not.

The other part of trip insurance that is sometimes useful is the medical coverage and medical evacuation - but primarily if you are going a long distance or out of the US. We bought it for Egypt trip because I did not want to be in Egyptian hospital with some major illness or injury for a long time. I assume there are decent hospitals in Hawaii, but the evacuation part might be important to you.

For those with public insurance (Medicare, Medicaid, etc.) the medical part is important since these do not cover outside of US - again, not relevant in Hawaii.

I'll just point out once again - Those who say that the insurance really paid off for them either 1) don't travel much 2) don't understand insurance or 3) are really unlucky.

If you travel often and aren't particularly unlucky, you'd lose if you insured every trip. It's the only way insurance companies stay in business. It's only a good idea to insure a trip if your circumstances are particularly pointing to the possibility of needing to cancel.

Then again, if you really couldn't relax and look forward to the trip because you thought there'd be a chance of having to cancel and losing your money, it might be money well spent. We've traveled with family who really felt the need to insure to feel good about booking a non-refundable trip. We didn't want it, but it was worth it for everyone to be able to just look forward to things without major worry.

Thanks everyone for the advice. We'll probably get insurance for piece of mind. I've gotten sick twice when travelling; once on Maui and once in Greece. It hasn't happened yet right before a trip, but anything's possible. We did look at insuremytrip.com and it's a good site for comparison.

we buy insurance every time...in January..husband couldn't move...cancelled trip...got money back..better than losing 3,000!

Depends for us on the trip. If it is a 'big' trip,
as far as length of time, $ involved, distance - planned months in advance for all four of us, (we have had to cancel for elder parents, illness of one of our children) then I add it up, figure out what is covered/I can cancel, etc like previous poster said and sometimes purchase, sometimes not.

What I do have is the medical/evacuation/emergency insurance , but I have that for all year, worldwide, thru Amex/Access - it is about 150 annually for all four of us, covers us all and flies one of us if necessary to wherever if any other family member is ill and not at home. With us scattered at different times throughout the year, this gives me peace of mind.

We've had two different friends who have had to cancel travel plans this week due ot unexpected health problems and it sure opened my eyes to needing insurance on future trips. Fortunately, they had both bought insurance as these were big trips. So, you never know!

I travel a LOT. I have never bought travel insurance. If I had been putting the money that travel insurance would have cost for all my trips in the last 15 years into a special savings fund, I could now go around the world a couple times in first class luxury. So if one of these days I do have to cancel a trip, I'm thousands ahead by just losing that trip's cost as I've saved far more over the years.

Incidentally, I'm not talking about travel that includes huge package tours or cruises that are not refundable at all -- that might be a different matter. But the vast majority of my travel costs ARE refundable with minimum notice, anyway.

Read the fine print and make sure you know what you're getting. A recent package to Disney came with an insurance offering. But the insurance didn't cover the air portion of the package which went by the airline's rules. The rest of the package, hotel etc, was covered but reading further we saw that those items were cancellable/changeable anyway up to 7 days prior to arrival and at that point would have just been a $100 cancellation fee. Then we found out that in hurricane-warning situations, Disney was waiving all change and cancellation fees and airlines were allowing changes. So the insurance ended up boiling down to pretty much paying $90 to insure us against a $100 cancellation fee.

Read the fine print.

Some policies do not insure against needing to cancel when an elderly parent becomes ill, only for the illness of the traveler.

Question about getting ill...if you come down with the stomach flu the day/night before you are suppose to fly and obviously you cannot board a plane with that "kind of stuff" going on! Will I need to physically go to the doctor to get the illness documented or will a phone call to the MD (and then they write in the chart) suffice? How does this work? We have the TravelGuard Essential policy.

I think it is a poor investment unless the cost is worth it to you in freeing your mind of worry.

If the money is spent in advance and is non-cancallable or cnahgeable (cruise, prepaid resort) then travel insurance makes sense. If it's just reservations that are pay as you go and can be cancelled until 6pm - and the plane fare can be changed for a modest fee it doesn;t really make sense.

nytraveler - Even if everything is paid in advance, trip insurance doesn't usually make sense. You pay based on the amount you're insuring against, so you should always insure only your non-cancellable reservations anyway.

As Neopolitan said, if you insured all your (non-cancellable) trips over a lifetime, most travelers would spend way, way more money in insurance than what they would have had to spend to cancel one or two trips along the way.

Insurance of any kind is not going to pay off financially, on average. It makes sense to pay to insure things that would financially break us without insurance (house fires, liability, etc). Or, if you know you're in a situation where you might have to cancel a trip, it can make sense to insure it.

Or, as stated before, if you simply wouldn't be able to relax about losing the money without it.

Kind of off the subject, but I'm amazed at the number of people who get upset about having to spend an extra $5 or $10 to get some foreign currency (for peace of mind), or maybe obsess about trying to save an extra $25 on airfare, yet think nothing of spending a couple hundred dollars for travel insurance saying it gives them "peace of mind".

shelbyjosh: In my experience (twice, now) the doctor needs to write you a note certifying that you were too ill to travel. It's up to your doctor whether or not he/she will do that without having actually examined you. The note is then forwarded to the airline and the insurance carrier.

Regarding the comments made here about trip insurance being a waste, I second the views of others who have significant-enough medical histories to make medical care a concern. In my case, I sure haven't stopped traveling, but I buy insurance that pays for medevac when I am in a place where medical care is problematic.