There are a lot of options for travel insurance. We use Allianz for our family of 5 and have no affiliation with them, just sharing our personal experience. We recommend researching the plans and types of coverage that would most benefit you and your family.
Back in December, I wrote about how we handle travel insurance. The $400 annual plan through Allianz that we carry for our family of five, and why we switched from skipping insurance to getting an annual plan (you can read all of the details on it in the post below)
. Until this point we’d never even filed a claim.
Travel Insurance: Do We Buy It or Skip It?
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December 22, 2025
I know this probably sounds like an ad, but I promise it isn’t. It’s not the most exciting topic, though I do think it’s a really useful one. We have something much more fun coming next week (2025 travel superlatives!), but today I want to share how we actually handle travel insurance. At some point, especially once you start traveling with kids, the wh…
That changed.
After years of carrying the coverage, this year had some travel snafus and we filed our first travel insurance claim (and then a second one) through Allianz. We had no idea if the claims would be covered and how the process would work, keep reading and we’ll show you how every step of the process went.
Mandy had a work trip planned and her flight was cancelled right before she was scheduled to leave. Actually, two flights were cancelled. She was able to rebook her first, but that flight was also cancelled.
With no other option, and a photoshoot in Illinois on the line that had been in the works for months, Mandy booked a new $800+ flight leaving in a few hours, rented a car, drove to a different airport 1.5 hours away to start her trip.
We saved all the receipts and kept our fingers crossed that maybe our travel insurance would cover this unexpected expense and filed a claim.
The claim process is pretty straightforward.
You provide details of what happened and why.
Enter your expense details
Upload supporting documents (receipts, cancellation notice, invoices etc)
Submit the claim
Filing was easy enough. It took 16 business days to get an approval. We were reimbursed the full $861.73.
We were surprised that the original airline didn’t offer any compensation for the cancellation. Without insurance, we would be out the entire amount.
From claim date to the money hitting our account, the full process took 17 days.
Save every receipt.
Looking back we could’ve included other additional expenses that we had from this trip:
Gas for the rental car
Food during the 3 hour drive
Airport parking
I also wish we would’ve contacted the airline earlier for a cancellation reason. They didn’t initially provide one, and it was required for the claim. They sent us over an email document with the cancellation reason.
On our trip to Spain this Summer, our 8 year old got a gnarly cut on her foot at the beach. We knew pretty quickly it was going to need some medical attention. Mandy did some googling and found a doctor that would do home visits. Within 30 minutes of making the phone call, he was at our airbnb cleaning up our daughter’s wound.
When we paid, he gave us a paper he said we could try submitting to our insurance, so when we returned we submitted the papers he gave us and within 2 business days we received an email that our claim was fully covered and being reimbursed.
Safe to say, we were impressed!
Before this, travel insurance felt like one of those things you hope you would never have to use. Now that we have, it worked exactly the way we hoped it would.
If you travel even a few times a year, it’s worth considering. There are tons of different providers out there. One disrupted trip can easily cost more than the policy itself.
What’s your take on travel insurance? Is it worth it? Is it a scam? Drop your comments below, I’d love to know your thoughts.
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