🤕 How credit card insurance paid for my surgery in Asia

Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 21 seconds

Good morning, and welcome back to Daily Drop, the only newsletter scientifically proven to increase your quality of life (but don’t fact-check me… just trust me).

We’ve got a jam-packed one today, folks…

• 🤕 How my credit card insurance paid for my $5,000 surgery

• ✈️ Spirit eliminates all change and cancellation fees

• 🌎 Where in the World Wednesday

🤕 How my credit card insurance paid for my $5,000 surgery

As you know, I recently underwent surgery here in Indonesia… It was a pretty turbulent experience.

Getting really sick or experiencing a serious injury is one of the worst fears we travelers have when abroad in a strange, isolated place.

But one thing in particular can bring you peace of mind and, more importantly, completely save you when you need help the most.

I’m talking about having extensive insurance coverage from premium credit cards.

Specifically, emergency medical coverage for travel outside of the country.

Most of us know that many cards with high annual fees come with insurance.

But most of you probably have no clue what to actually DO when 💩 hits the fan during a trip.

So today, I want to tell my story and cover the following tips when it comes to this topic:

• Which card I used for my surgery (it was [[ the-platinum-card-canadian.name ]] (the Canadian one), actually, and I’ll tell you why)

• The steps I took to initiate coverage

• The steps the insurance company took

• How I coordinated with the hospital, insurance company, and intermediary company for billing, without having to go out of pocket

  How much money I saved because of this card

• Tips for being prepared ahead of time so you can easily initiate insurance coverage

It’s too long for this newsletter, so check out the full story on our website.

It’s not a fun article, it’s pretty long, it’s pretty tedious, there aren’t a lot of photos or jokes, but it might be the most useful hands-on travel advice I’ve given in Daily Drop:

P.S. The article also includes a shoutout to a local Indonesian Daily Drop reader who helped me during the process (thanks, Rob—you rock!!!).

✈️ Spirit eliminates all change and cancellation fees

All that talk about surgery, insurance terms and conditions, and physical pain was kind of a downer, eh?

So, how about we move on to something happy and simple? 😄

Spirit Airlines has just announced that there are no longer any change or cancellation fees for their flights! Wooh!

U.S. airlines have slowly been transitioning in this direction for a while, but this is still huge news coming from a budget airline like Spirit.

Before this announcement, Spirit’s cancellation fees could be as high as $119, often costing far more than the ticket itself.

Now, however, flyers have complete flexibility to change or cancel any Spirit flight:

Unfortunately, Spirit still charges you for just about everything else…

But as I’ve mentioned in the past, having elite status with Spirit can eliminate all of those additional fees.

If you combine that with the newly added flexibility of free changes and cancellations, Spirit looks pretty darn appealing for U.S. flyers.

The craziest part is that they didn’t even announce this… they just updated their website.

Classy move, Spirit. Classy move.

Just days before this move, Frontier announced that it would also eliminate change and cancellation fees (though not for its “Basic” fares).

It’s just another example of how important competition in the airline industry is and why the U.S. is the best place in the world to fly, even if we do have some issues…

Meanwhile, up in Canada, even high-ranking elite flyers like me are still slapped with hundreds of dollars in change or cancellation fees for a single flight on Air Canada. 😒

But I digress.

🌎 Where in the World Wednesday

Before we jet-set off to this week’s fabulous destination, I wanted to let you all know that FareDrop is having a FLASH SALE through Monday, May 27th, in lieu of Memorial Day!

We’re offering 50% off our Pro Plan, so now is a super great time to try out the app that lets the deal determine the destination… in the best way possible.

If you’re on the fence about all the great flight deals you could score by using FareDrop, let me talk about this deal that just came through to Nice, France 👇

Okay, WHAT. $365 round-trip to fly to Nice? That’s… niiiice 😎

There’s honestly no better place that I’d rather have a fresh, crispy, buttery croissant in than Nice 🤤

Aside from the incredible food and wine that you’ll find in this part of the French Riviera, here are some other suggestions that make it worthwhile to visit.

Nice has, of course, beautiful beaches with the stunning Promenade de Anglaise to stroll along.

It’s rich with history, dating back to being founded by the Greeks in 350 B.C., plus you’ll find an incredible Jazz festival in the summer and the famous Nice Carnival in the winter—many compare it to the lavishness of Mardi Gras.

And if you want a bit of a nature fix, you should head to the Mont Boron region that overlooks the port of Nice and is full of hiking, biking trails, and a historical park.

Now for some quirk… consider paying a visit to La Tete Carrée Library.

Yes, an entire library is housed inside that blockhead (for lack of a better word?).

I dunno, but either way, you could spend your holiday in this beautiful corner of the world all thanks for a cheap flight from FareDrop.

And don’t forget! The flash sale finishes on May 27th at end of day!

If you’re looking for another mid-tiered, solid travel card, I’d highly consider the [[ citi-strata-premier-card.name ]], which just had a major revamp!

OoOoOh… the mystery 😉

If you want an honest review about whether the [[ citi-strata-premier-card.casual-card-name ]] is all that and a bag of chips or just plain overhyped, our latest YouTube video has you covered!

That’s all for today, folks! I hope you enjoyed this newsletter and learned some solid tips about implementing credit card travel insurance while traveling abroad.

Personally, I hope never to have to use mine again… but I’m glad it’s there.

Take care, and see you tomorrow ❤️

5.1616° S, 119.4359° E