Tag: insurance

Should You Buy Cell Phone Insurance Or Get It From Your Credit Card?

Did you pick up a new phone during a sale on Black Friday or Cyber Monday and are wondering what’s the best way to protect that $1000+ purchase? You’re in luck because one of the newest benefits credit cards are adding is cell phone insurance. To be eligible, all you have to do is charge your cell phone bill to a card that provides coverage.

It doesn’t matter how you paid for the phone, although I hope you used a card that has some sort of purchase protection included.

Using the coverage from your credit card would seem to be a no-brainer. The coverage is free and continues for as long as you’re paying your bill with the card. However, did you look into if this is the best way to cover your phone against damage?

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Which Credit Cards Provide Trip Delay Insurance

One of the big perks of having a premium travel credit card is the travel protections the card provides, like trip delay insurance. Travel delays or cancellations are a part of life but knowing the costs that you incur will be reimbursed makes one less thing to worry about. All you need to do is make alternate plans to get to/from where you were going and arrange to be comfortable until that happens.

Trip delay insurance is something you don’t think about until you need to use it. Say you show up to the airport for your plane and it’s delayed 30 minutes, then 60 minutes, then 2 hours and eventually you’re told that there’s no way to get you to where you were going until the next day. You’ll need to find somewhere to stay, somewhere to eat and a way to get to/from those locations. Most people will get on a very long line to see if the airline will give them a free hotel night or a meal voucher. If you used a card that provides trip delay insurance, you know that you’ll be reimbursed for the reasonable cost of a hotel, meals, taxi/Uber and travel essentials during your delay and can make your own plans without having to wait.

I used to use my Citi Prestige for travels where trip delay coverage was important. However, Citi eliminated all of the travel coverages from their cards and I had to find another card that provides coverage for delays. Continue reading “Which Credit Cards Provide Trip Delay Insurance”

Credit Cards Are Adding Cell Phone Coverage But Benefits Aren’t All The Same

It used to be that just one or two of my credit cards offered any type of coverage for cell phones. When phones were less expensive and U.S. mobile providers were subsidizing the full cost, having insurance on your phone wasn’t viewed as being important. Now that more popular phones cost around or over the $1,000 range, and repair prices vary from $100 for a cracked screen to several hundred dollars for more severe damage, having a policy where you only need to pay a $50 deductible is an appealing option.

Customers were paying for their own coverage but the banks saw an opportunity to differentiate their product by offering Cell Phone Protection as a perk of their cards. Offering this benefit requires paying your cell phone bill with that card, so for the bank this is an excellent way for them to get you to put your recurring cell phone bill onto their card for month after month.

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Check Your AMEX Accounts For These Easy To Use Offers

I love to use AMEX Offers. They’re a super-easy way to earn money back from your American Express credit cards. If used often enough, you’re easily able to negate most or all of the annual fees that their cards charge.

Most of the AMEX Offers try to drive you to use a specific merchant. Such as the round of hotel offers from this summer or the discounts on restaurants at Walt Disney World. While these offers have expired, I noticed a new round of offers hit my accounts recently and they’re going to be even easier to use. These offers are targeted towards everyday spending.

I found these offers spread all over our AMEX accounts. Some were only on one card so you’ll have to go through each account. You’re only able to see up to 100 offers in your account at a time, If you look to be maxed out, use the trick from the link in this post to reveal all of your offers.

Here are just some of the offers I found:

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Yes, You Should Buy Medical Insurance For International Travel

When we’re traveling within the U.S., I don’t give much thought to insurance before the trip. I make sure to use a credit card that has good travel protections, and if I rent a car, I use a card that acts as the primary coverage in case there’s damage to the vehicle. For medical coverage, I’ll have my insurance card in my wallet in case I get sick or even worse if there’s some sort of emergency.

When traveling outside the United States, there are a bunch of things to think about. You need to reconfirm travel arrangements, make sure you have all the necessary travel documents and visas and arrange for your mail to be held, your pets to be looked after and everything else that goes through your head. It’s easy to forget that you should also be looking to buy a travel medical insurance policy for your trip.

That’s because even if your medical insurance reimburses you for expenses abroad, they will most likely be considered out-of-network charges with high deductibles and copays. If you have Medicare, you don’t have any coverage at all.

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