If you’re considering travel insurance for your holiday travel, there were a number of interesting articles written this week about things to consider. Last week we wrote about the importance of reading the fine print on any policy you’re considering. We stressed the importance of knowing exactly what you’re buying before you spend the cash. If you’re going to buy insurance, it ought to do what you think it is going to do — otherwise you might as well buy a lottery ticket! To extend on that, Personal Finance and Savings writes about a number of other factors to consider. Though they have a UK audience in mind, their guide offers a useful “travel insurance 101″ for beginners.

Eileen Ogintz, from the Miami Herald writes at length about why travelers should buy travel insurance. Among her more compelling reasons are winter sports:

A ski accident in Colorado last winter turned me into a believer. Sure, I had medical insurance. But my travel insurance policy picked up nearly $1,000 in costs that my medical insurance didn’t cover. Had it been necessary, the travel insurer would have arranged for medical evacuation and covered all of the costs if we’d needed to change our flights to return home earlier.

Finally, Group Trip Advisor, a frequent read for us here at Travel Guide for Your Finances, offers a number of valuable tips from a travel insurance “insider.” This is a must read for people on the brink of taking the travel insurance plunge. They cover a number of specific items to look at when considering travel insurance including: medical evacuation, nearest appropriate facility, coverage limits, trip cancellation, and terrorism coverage.

It’s time to start thinking about the 2006 tax year again, but some people still haven’t received their refunds for 2005 yet. This is especially true for people who moved without telling the IRS or who whose mail forwarding expired before the IRS mailed their check. It can be easy for travelers or snowbirds to lose track of or even forget about their refunds entirely. Each year the IRS keeps hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid refunds. Fortunately, the IRS will mail your refund check if you get in touch with them.

You can call the IRS “Where’s My Refund” service at this number: 800-829-1954.

You can also access this service online at:

http://www.irs.gov/individuals/article/0,,id=96596,00.html

However, they will ask you to enter in your Social Security number, filing status and the refund amount on your 2005 tax return.

Airlines are strapped for cash.  Security lines are getting longer.  Airline staff and personnel are working longer hours and under more stressful conditions.  Nonetheless, flying on many airlines is getting more luxurious — but probably not for you.

At least four airlines have announced investments of hundreds of millions of dollars — not to relieve the cramped conditions in coach and improve the sometimes surly service, but to make first and business class on international routes even more luxurious. Why? Because that’s where the money is.

Delta, despite being bankrupt, is investing millions to roll out a new flat-bed business class seat. It will provide a six-foot, three-inch bed. Jim Whitehurst, Delta’s CEO says it will be an “unparalleled experience for our customers.” [Read More...]

According to Sophia Banay (Forbes Magazine) another advantage to shelling out thousands of dollars for those first class seats is the opportunity to be differentiated from ‘cattle class’ fliers. So when you’re traveling this holiday season, just remember, at least it’s not that bad for everyone.

These days you can get insurance for just about anything, but in the travel industry, you can find insurance options for just about every aspect of travel you can think of:  trip cancellation, theft, baggage loss and even physical injury.  Additionally, the number of places you can buy travel insurance from is equally vast.  On the free side, many platinum credit cards come with basic travel related features.  But after that, the price for travel insurance can increase drastically, and it seems everyone is looking for a cut of the action.  Most car rental places will play coy about the free car rental insurance that comes standard with many credit cards as they try to pitch their own insurance options. Booking services will often offer cancellation protection for a fee, and travel agents can give you a whole host of insurance options when shopping for that perfect getaway.
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When making purchases internationally with a credit card, consumers need to be aware of three things:

1. The exchange rate in the country that they are visiting.
2. The “foreign transaction fee” that their credit card company will charge for making an international purchase.
3. How to handle “dynamic currency conversion” options that the merchant might offer.

This site has devoted considerable attention to all these topics, but recently an email from a reader exposed a blind spot in our coverage. In her email she basically asks “Who are the major dynamic currency conversion providers, what rates do they charge and is there any reason to pick one over another?”. These are very good questions, and they demonstrate a fair amount of research to even know to ask them.
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The Washington Post reports that card holders will likely be allowed to reclaim foreign transaction fees collected by credit card companies.

Consumers will share in a $336 million settlement of a lawsuit accusing several banks and credit card groups of conspiring to charge excessive fees on foreign currency transactions, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.

The settlement covers holders of U.S.-issued MasterCard or Visa credit cards or debit cards, and Diners Club credit cards who made foreign transactions from February 1, 1996 to the present. Tens of thousands of cardholders, including companies whose employees travel internationally, may recover money.

Elsewhere in the article:

Coughlin said one benefit of the litigation was that card issuers now break out currency charges as a separate item on customer bills. “This makes banks competitive in setting those charges,” he said.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs had announced a pending settlement in July. Pauley’s approval is preliminary, and carries several conditions. A hearing to enter a final judgment was set for November 2, 2007.

We’ll continue to follow this story as it develops, but on the surface this looks like very good news for people who have paid foreign transaction fees while traveling internationally since February 1996.