Overseas trip? Be sure it's insured.

If you're one of those "last-minute" people who leave things until the pressure is on and then produce furiously to slip in right at deadline with a sense of great exhilaration, I'm here to tell you it doesn't work that way with travel any more. Just one example: Get there within the required time limits for a flight or they won't let you board.

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The same with travel insurance. Buying travel insurance is not a last-minute thing.

My husband Bill and I took off several weeks ago on a trip to visit grandson Ben and his parents, who are living in London. We then took some time on our own for a romantic one-week cruise off the coast of Italy.

The trip was wonderful, but the two weeks before departure were anything but.

Family illness and business growth put our travel plans into serious question. Should we cancel? That would be costly. Was it too late to buy travel insurance?

This is what we learned. You must buy it in advance and in most cases it should be purchased within 14 days of your initial deposit. We've since found out that some companies do offer insurance at a later date, but at exorbitant rates.

Laura Brusenhan, a good friend and the owner of Sunshine Travel, had quickly and quietly made all the arrangements for our trip. But we had ignored her recommendation for travel insurance.

There are horror stories of people having to spend many thousands of dollars because they have been unprepared for hospitalization or medical evacuation when they became seriously ill or had an accident in another country. Or, someone back home dies and you need to return quickly, adding great financial stress to an already emotional situation.

I'm now a believer in travel insurance for any future trips. Actually, I should have been a believer after an incident last year.

My sister, traveling in Vancouver, suffered a serious hip and leg break in a freak accident. She was exiting a cab at a restaurant. (On the lighter side, it was a Mexican restaurant--she couldn't wait to get home for a "fix.")

Fortunately, she was accompanied by her daughter and the Canadian hospital and staff were excellent. However, because she was out of the country, her medical costs were not covered by Medicare. The trip home, weeks later, was very expensive and complicated to plan. Travel insurance, and specifically supplemental medical insurance, would have been very helpful.

Travel insurance is a complex business. You're insuring against risk--the risk of losing a large amount of money if you have to cancel or interrupt your trip. But there are definite rules. (Insurance companies are in business to make money, after all.) Travel insurance doesn't cover the effects of war or terrorism. You can't put it into play if, on a whim, you decide not to go.

Trip cancellation has to be for a good reason, usually defined as death or serious illness of the traveler, your traveling companion or an immediate family member--a parent, son, daughter or spouse, not your cousin, nephew or aunt.

Other covered situations would be strikes, weather that disrupts travel, and loss of your job. If you have a pre-existing medical condition, Brusenhan told me that it must be under control at the time of the reservation. Go with a good insurance company if you have such a condition, as there are lots of gray areas and documentation is critical.

For this reason, Brusenhan recommends her clients consider trip insurance immediately when they make the reservation, though she concedes that, in the excitement and euphoria of planning the trip, it's hard for most to focus on this issue, particularly if they are healthy and fit. Cost is based on age and price of the trip and averages about 3.5 to 8 percent of its total cost.

Accidents happen. She told me about someone who broke a leg after slipping on a cobblestone walk. Another person was hit by a bus as she was looking the wrong way while crossing a London street and ended up spending her week's vacation in a hospital. Sounds silly, but after touring London, where they drive on the left side of the road, I can certainly see how this could happen.

Other clients had to interrupt trips to fly back from remote vacations to take care of a death in the family. Emergency travel home costs plenty. There are no good deals here. That's why travel insurance is a good idea.

There are many more senior travelers on the highways and byways these days. Be aware that Medicare doesn't cover medical costs outside the U.S. Plan to get supplemental medical insurance coverage while you are away.

If you're not retired, check with your health insurance provider as many, if not most, don't cover policyholders once they leave the country.

Buy coverage from a respected insurer that will be responsive and responsible when you have a claim. Checking out what was available by a Google search on the Internet, I was floored by the number of listings.

Brusenhan says she works only with companies with outstanding reputations: Traveler's, Tripmate and Access America. You don't want to deal with a company that will deny your claim or create extra hassle in a very difficult time.

In particular, she recommends Access America, as it covers "default of suppliers"--in other words, bankruptcy of an airline, a tour company or a cruise line. And we've all heard horror stories there as well.

Recently, due to the drop-off in travel bookings since 9/11 and with the war in Iraq, some of the cruise lines have introduced programs that enable passengers to cancel shortly before sailing and apply the credit to a future trip or even a refund.

There's a fee involved, but it does show some flexibility at a time when interest in overseas travel is significantly down.

If an emergency occurs and someone agrees to go in your or your travel companion's place, different carriers have different regulations and there's generally a fee involved. Don't make any assumptions. Check with your travel agent and read the fine print.

When should you get travel insurance? Brusenhan recommends it for any major vacation trip that is costly or where you plan months or even years ahead. Get it if you are traveling to remote areas far from hospitals or available medical care. Get it if you are leaving elderly parents behind.

While many people don't believe it's a good value, travel insurance brings great peace of mind.

It's hard to know what to buy, but my best advice is not to try this at home on your computer. Forget the Internet on this one and leave it to an expert--your travel agent--who, without doubt, has seen again and again the "what ifs" that can occur on that trip of a lifetime.

And you can bet they won't be leaving it to the last minute.

Copyright 2003 San Antonio Express-News. Reprinted with Permission

Jeannie Wyatt, CFA, MBA

Jeanie Wyatt, a member of the Texas Business Hall of Fame, formed South Texas Money Management in November 2000 after 25+years experience in the banking trust area with three Texas bank holding companies. In 1998 she was appointed to the Texas Pension Review board; a year later she was appointed to the National Endowment Fund Board of Trustees of the American Red Cross, a fund that provides a permanent source of support for Red Cross services. Wyatt also served on the Board of Governors of the Association for Investment Management and Research (AIMR), an international organization of more than 100,000 investment professionals. A Charted Financial Analyst, she has an honors degree in actuarial science from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Her column, "More than Money," appears every other week in the San Antonio Express-News. She can be contacted at jwyatt@stmm-ltd.com.