SNM084: Getting Insurance Abroad

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getting awesome insurance abroad on today's episode. Today's episode is brought to you by converted the ultimate list building tagging and segmentation tool to find out how Convert kid can change your business and w profits. Go to serve the master dot com backslash Convert kit today Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated? If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host. As a father of two young Children in the sole breadwinner in my family, there are certain things that have begun to concern me more and more as I enter the back end of my mid thirties. One of my big concerns is that if something were to happen to me, my family would have trouble accessing my revenue. No, I have many passive revenue streams that flow into my bank accounts, but I don't have the most set up in a way that my girlfriend could easily take over that someone else could easily run. Who's not me. I get paid dozens of different ways, and it all goes in different accounts of my girlfriend. Wouldn't know Amelie which things to shut down in which do not it will be a hard transition. Maura Maura. I'm setting up things in a much more automated process so that the system will continue to run even if something happens to me. But eventually the machine will break. You know, the credit card that I have automatically buying traffic will eventually expire, and when that happens, then the ads stopped running in. Those traffic sources will dry up, so the business will continue to generate revenue for at least 32 10 years after I'm gone. But I don't want to depend on that as the only thing take care of my family. So when the things I've begun to look at his life insurance, and I'm sure if you're a little older, me if you're a parent, you're very familiar with this whole experience, and that's really tough. One of the challenges with life insurance is that most companies, especially American companies right now they're going through a lot of ups and downs of some political turmoil. And certain plans have just been going crazy, especially health insurance. One of the things I'm dealing with is finding company that you know my unique situation. So every time I speak to a company in America, the way they have treated me has been I would just say unacceptable. It's not something I'm interested in doing. I say, Look, I live abroad. Here's my situation Yada, yada ending What? You have to fly back here and stay here for two months while we decide if we want to give you insurance. They want me to fly back to fill out the form in person. Then they want me to wait. And if they decide that, they want to ensure me that I have to take a physical from one of their doctors, so something that's totally fine if you live in America is very, very inconvenient when you live abroad. This has been my initial experience, and looking at these experiences, it's just a very big nuisance. So not only would I, you're flying back for the physical fine. That's annoying, I say, Well, what can I just goto intern actually credit hospital anywhere else in the world? There's no American Sharon's American Hospital classic, and, as usual, other countries have much more sophisticated options. Now one of the more popular options is Hong Kong, and I have thought about that. Hong Kong is great. You can go there, sign up for insurance on your phone, text them your location, the city, and they'll send you back the closest doctor, and you could do it all in the morning. I know people that have done that. So I was considering that. And then I started talking to a few interesting British companies, and I finally got on the phone with actually Guy from England last night, and they we're like, we might not even have to do a physical, And if we do, it's very easy. You just pick any doctor one. They send us your records. So it's very easy, especially because I'm traveling to my main hospital. I'll be near my main hospital next few weeks, so it's very easy for me. Ask them to send in the records for my physical a few months ago or, you know, to get whatever tests they want done redone. I don't care. So looking at these things, what's interesting is we are so used to thinking that it's in America or that it's the way things should be done. And then we discover other places. Do it much easier now when looking at domestic policies in my country, in my agent country, very disappointing. It's definitely not an option. I looked at several countries around here, and they all have terrible domestic policies. Even when you go to their website or try and call them, they don't understand what they're doing. They don't know how to do health and journal life insurance. Their financial structures are not sophisticated enough to handle my needs. What I really want is a policy that just takes care of my kids. Once my you know, once my kids were all 18 they're on their own will be fine. But you know what? Kids? Two years old, I can't I can't get a job. It just started raining a little bit, so I apologize. If you can hear that in the background. This is actually my second time trying to record this I wait until the rain stopped and came back out. Of course, it starts again, but it's just a little bit so hopeful it'll fade. I think it's just a little shower. Choosing a policy, you know, the things we look at her can I afford it? How long does it last? How do they handle the payouts? You know all of these elements. I'm doing a lot of lawyerly stuff, working on prepping everything for getting married so that my Children also protected. And several other ways. These things become more important. You know, As you get older and you have Children of these things, they become important for a period of time and then they don't matter anymore. You know, once your Children out of the house, I was worried about So looking at all these things, my experience has been very interesting. You know, I'm still in the middle phase of doing insurance. I'm waiting to see what kind of offers they make and what they're gonna ask me. Todo. But so far, most of it's really simple. Some of the things they ask for are really weird and not easy to get. They want a certified copy of my passport, and I had to say I don't know if that is basically you have to get someone to sign and say I really seen this passport and it's the real deal on a piece of paper. I'll probably get it done at the embassy in Bangkok because that's one of easier ways to do it unless they tell me somewhere else, even easier, like one of their banking partners and the other thing they want. And this is something that a lot of people, one that's really, really hard to get is a called Ah Bill Thio where I live. I don't get any mail here. The mail service where I live I would describe us extremely unreliable or shockingly unreliable. Basically, if you were to send me a letter, I would say 50 50 shot. It arrives. I did have a letter arrived last year, and I was amazed when it showed up. I then sent 10 more letters, and none of them arrived, so it might not even be 50 50. It might be like 10% so we don't have any of that type of paperwork, so there's always these little hurdles you start to face when you're dealing with stuff internationally. So that's kind of my life insurance experience. And I'm not too worried about it, because whatever form they want, I can get my landlord design. It's a yes person lives here. They've been here a long time. What do you want any of those things? I just don't pay utilities. You know, all the steps, including our rent, water, electricity, All that stuff's all included. So we don't have a separate electric bill at this dress. Those are the little hurdles of the experience. But overall was very quick filling out the form took me 15 minutes last night, talking on the phone to the guy with another 15 minutes compared to the times I've been on the phone with American companies, which were a nightmare and dealing with all those things. The second thing, Then the guy, of course. You know, when you talk to a broker, they always want up, sell you. And he was like, Well, what about health insurance and health insurance in this country basically doesn't exist. I've tried it multiple times and all the local companies we called. We went to our doctrines that Who's the health insurance person that you recommend, who's worked well. We called the guy, and he cooly didn't understand anything. He works for a major insurance company, one of the largest insurance companies in the country, and he couldn't understand what we want. He didn't understand what health insurance was. He just started. What they do here is they make these. You have 30 or 40 insurance, but it's just have names like Happy Life Plan, Son, Life Plan, Magical Existence Plan and they don't mean anything. And you can't find any information on the website. Look, how do I know which one they want? What's the good? I just want good health insurance like I'm a simple guy. Tell me the different choices and keep it simple. When you go to Starbucks, they give you three sizes. Imagine if they offered you 78 sizes and each side was one middle leader bigger than that? How many milliliters do you want? What I don't know. It's too complicated. We need to simplify it a little bit. They don't have to do that here. And so they lost my business. So I'm talking the phone on the guy and he says. Well, here we have three basic playing is what do you want us? And here's what I want. I really don't need local doctor coverage. I don't care about that. We go to the doctor here, kids go The doctor. It's next month, but what I want is hospital coverage. And so, basically your plan that covers four people with a per person deductible 250 bucks. So if que goes the hospital the 1st 250 bucks I pay for the rest of the year? Anya Medical bills for my kids. Anything else? The insurance pays for four people. It's $300 a month for really strong insurance. Now, when I had insurance back in America, it was way more than that for just me. That's kind of amazing. You get really strong coverage for way less money. Now, of course, the bills here also weightless the hospital near my house that I prefer not to use. This island hospital has a menu out front, and next time I go by the hospital, maybe I'll take a picture of it. But they list all the prices for everything, including brain surgery, which is around our $900 right now with the exchange rate. It's like the drive thru McDonald's and I'm A I'm a little nervous by the thought of picking my surgery for menu out front, and it is where we had my son. We did use this hospital for my son, and it wasn't my choice. I'll tell you right now, I said to my girlfriend, Let's go to the big city, Let's go to a fancy hospital And she said, No, this is more than fancy enough. I'll tell you right now she, after having the baby there should tell May know next time we'll do the fancy one. So the reason insurance and health is on my mind, my friend right now might have dang a fever. He was getting tested last night. He didn't have the results. When we spoke last night, he had to fly to the hospital in the big city, and he's staying at the brand new, really nice top of the range hospital. And I've always been, you know, since I've been living abroad, I've been ill, take care about myself kind of person. But looking at this situation thinking well, if something happens and you need a surgery or you have to deal with something really serious. It helps to have a layer of insurance and to be able to cover my family for something that's affordable compared to other things. And again, they're much cheaper levels. I could ensure the whole family for $100 as well. I haven't made any final decision. We're just looking at the numbers. And I said the information my father and he's a lawyer. So obviously his replied to me, was almost unintelligible, you know, basically recommended that I talkto 20 lawyers and 15 brokers, and it was almost, you know, it's what happens when your family's lawyers or when you know, lawyer, learn everything they say it tends to make it more confusing rather than less. I sent a question. Is this good? Yes or no? And his reply back was not an answer to that question. So I'm just someone looking for something very simple now. One thing he said. I was looking for life insurance and the plan was a whole life, which is like a forever plan. But he was like you should just get a term which is actually something I would rather d'oh. I just want to cover my kids till they're 18. Boy thing is, I'm not done having kids. Otherwise, I would just say I need 18 year plan, but I really need is probably 25 or 30. Maybe I'll be having kids for the next five or 10 years. Don't know. Can it locked into that? So the circle back when, er traveling abroad. This is one of our international episodes of the podcast. There are things you want to look at. Depending upon the type of trip you're taking the type of journey or taking one of the big issues. People even already have life insurance back home. It will change, or it won't cover you when you're abroad. The rules are different, and it's very important to look into that. So if you're already part of a big insurance plan, if you're locked into something, take a look at that. Maybe one of your concerns when you leave your job is about the cost of health insurance. My last job, which was 6.5 years ago, almost seven no more than six almost seven years ago, and when I left, they you know they do that cobra thing because you have that big health insurance Now. At the time there was a big discount. So because of a play, a law that was in effect for all new, another week and 1/2 after I got fired. If I'd been fired two weeks later, I would have gotten this. But after that special discount plan expired for insurance for just me with $550 a month, that's what they want. And I couldn't afford that. So, of course I don't have health insurance for a while. And eventually, you know, I was able to get a really cheap plan. Ah, comparatively cheap plan through someone who worked at my gym. I think at that point was paying like $100 a month for insurance. But it wasn't very good. It was again, really, like emergency room insurance was things we have, like five or 10,000 no deductible, I don't know. But it was just for emergencies and had that for a little while. It's very hard to go to the doctor because any insurance about the whole hassles, I'm sure you know, if you've been to that experience. So looking at this, it's like, Well, I can assure the whole family for less and again this was one of the premium plans. I don't really look through all of the paper again. I had the guy sent me a couple of options last night. I sent in the life insurance application just to see what kind of numbers will throw at me and see how tough they make the process. And so far, everything I've read online about this company has been good. Other people use them. It's very easy to get your medical procedures. I have a simple preapproval process. In fact, I only found one. I did find a block post where someone complained about a bad experience with them, and that's okay. What's interesting is I only found one. Normally, you'll find for most insurance company in America. Dozens of reports on the guys he was very specific was basically bad experience, trying to get preapproval for one procedure. Interesting. It was also he was trying to get preapproval like the day before for a mole removal, so it wasn't like a major emergency. But at the same time, I could understand, you know, wanting to get stuck taking care of it, being annoyed when they mess up all your stuff and make it hard. So I did my due diligence a little bit. I'm still in the research phase, but that's what I want you to remember is toe. Do all of your research and take care of things. You know, there's other types of insurance. If you're doing short trips, I do recommend getting like Backpackers insurance. If you're traveling on the cheap, that tends to cost like a dollar a day or something. But if someone steals your backpack with your laptop in in your whole career, it's useful. The have thinking about these things. It's always finding the balance of Can I afford the insurance? How much is it gonna hurt me? And for a long time, you know, we haven't had any of these insurance is because it's expensive, right? It's a lot of money, and I wouldn't think about these things. I don't even worry about life insurance except write these kids. You know, they depend on me. So these are things to think about. You know, it's part of this. It's me maturing as a person, but Also, it's just going through different experiences, and we have looked multiple times in the past at life insurance and health insurance and really struggled. And so really, you have to find specifically expat insurance, which targets people that aren't in their home country and setting these things up. And then beyond that, the next phase is setting things up so that the money goes into a trust rather than into a lump sum payment into a local bank account. Because I don't trust the banks here enough to put that kind of money into an account in one day. These are all things to think about. These are all steps to take forward, really comes down to doing a little bit of research online and realizing that these are things that important take care of. But they're also way, way less expensive, even now, looking at the premiums, you know, with the attempt at nationalized health care in America to go through one of those plans for people that are struggling financially, those air still way more expensive than the cost of ensuring my family here. So when you're thinking about the costs of moving abroad and the cost of leaving your job. One of your concerns is probably How do you take care of your health care and you'll go through a period of time where you have to. If you stay in America, we have to deal with American policies, American prices. But if you hop abroad and you can even set this up in advance, Thio take effect. The day you leave, you could be massively protected for pennies on the dollar, so ensuring myself in ensuring my family is even for premium insurance. It's still cheaper for four people than it was for one person before, when I was just continuing my old previous coverage for my last job. Take the time to do the research. Look at these elements. Look at how you planned for your future and realized that moving abroad opens you up to business with a lot of different national corporations. There are a lot of companies out of England that do expat insurance. Remember England being son used to never set on the English Empire, so they're used to dealing with many many of these countries until 1999 England on Hong Kong, so they had a heavy presence in Asia so you can find businesses around here that are far more sophisticated and deal with international issues. Don't get caught up when you talk to your American broker. They have no idea what to do because they lack that sophistication. Don't think the story's over. Most likely, you can speak to a company based in England company based in other strong countries and discover they know exactly what to do. And it costs far last money. The numbers they sent me last night were very pleasing, and I'm looking to see if I can't tweak them a little bit more with a few changes. But suddenly things that I never thought I'd be able to afford are something that I can I can kind of handle because I don't want to just recommend things to talk about things that are crazy, expensive and that you know I want things that you can afford. Even if you're only living on two or $3000 a month, that's really the place you could be where you can survive and in fact going through my article writing program, going through and looking at my blood post all about where you can get paid to write the most. If you go through these steps, you can easily afford these extra things that protect you in your family so you don't have to give up having medical protection or protection for family just cause you go abroad. Health and Companies in America Insurance covers America always tell you that if you let your coverage lapse, that's when they see an opportunity to really screw you in the double. Your insurance will triple your insurance and throw these massive premiums at you and play all these games. It's another way, and with big corporations, and they reckon government used fear to control you, right? They say. Oh, if you don't have insurance, you have to pay a fine. How does that help anyone now, Whether or not you believe America is the best medical system of the world, I get it. I've been I've experienced both ends, but I've experienced medicine in England, which is amazing. But I also know that for certain areas it's really tough. Usually, it seems, in my experience, the best is to have a mix of private public options. That's just from my experience of traveling around the world. I always want to be sure that whatever we need, my family has the options. Now my family does have the international are the national health coverage for this country. I took care of that. You know, it's not very expensive and I paid for your events. And now that I'm thinking about that, I think we need to renew just It's just crossed my mind that we might be We might have actually lapsed. I might need to take care of that today and pay for the next year. But those things are important but providing layers of protection. These are things I didn't worry about when I was on my own. When it's backpacking, living on two or $3 van and care about that stuff to take the time research, these different things, you're worried about simply crossing the border. I was just talking to one of my tribe members about moving, and she wants to live somewhere, and she gave me a list of things she's looking for like beach sunny, tropical, good Internet, low cost of living. And I was talking, you know, just like in approves upset, I mention, Oh, did you listen to play it all. Carmen episode Just crossing the border into Mexico makes you eligible for all these different insurance is you don't have to go that far. So the insurance policy and looking at covers me anywhere in the world except America and simply by not having America as part of that coverage because it's my home country. So one of your home country is they exclude. As soon as you remove America, the cost goes through the floor. And again, I'm gonna look and see if I could tweak policies. And probably $300 a month is not what I need. It's probably more expensive than what I need. My father was definitely recommending that I look at some different options. I didn't really go through everything all the way. You know, I don't want to give you finalized numbers because I'm in the research phase, but because it's fresh on my mind because I think it's important, I thought would be a great topic for today's episode. Do a little research and you'll discover some amazing things. Some of the things that we thought would be so difficult to set up it would be so challenging but not really a big deal. Even my friend. Okay, he had an emergency. He's had a fever for about 45 days are getting sicker and sicker. And, yes, night before last, he thought, Oh, my gosh, I think I have dengue, which is one of the big worries in this part of the world, cause it's mosquito heavy. People don't get in a lot, but it does happen here. It's something that it just happens. You know, in the morning he decided he was sick and want to go to the doctor. Didn't want to go to a local hospital, so we hopped on the plane. There's 1 to 2 flights every single day from here to the big city. He flew on up, and now he's in a Tier one hospital, internationally accredited hospital. It's not that hard to get high level medical care, but it crossed my mind because it does happen occasionally. And when you have pretty good insurance, you can covered for things if you need them to fly you to a better hospital. If I need to go to a hospital, Hong Kong, if I need to go to a hospital in Japan whatever. Hopefully Japan, please. Not Japan. Police have been in Thailand. Then I'm fine. Then they'll take care of it. And the doctors will make that decision. Really? Probably. I don't think I need to go international. There are good enough hospitals in this country. I just want to goto one off my island. I mean, I live in a tiny, tiny tropical islands. I definitely want to go to a big city hospital that has a Tier one unit. All of these things become a lot easier, and you can lower the burden of stress when you do a little research and take care of these things. So as much as this lesson is about setting up insurance, it's also about realizing that you can search for new options. You can think outside the box. I went through those phases. I tried to deal with American companies. Total failure. They didn't reply to my e mails or phone calls. Then, when I tried to deal with domestic companies here, total failure on Lee. When I said, You know what? I just googled expat insurance. I said, Let me try another term and that's when I found several different companies including HSBC, which is a real known large brand, right? So there's large brands that you're familiar with with these banks in the world. If you have been an airport, you've probably seen HSBC ad they have. It has a lot in airports, so you could use a brand that you're familiar with. It's okay, a little bit of research and oftentimes discover that things are a lot cheaper than you thought. And so this is how you confined and get amazing insurance even when you've left that boy job. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master. Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode. We'll be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race. 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