We’re buying a trip with our credit card award points and frequent flyer miles for the airline portion. If we cancel the trip for a covered reason how will the travel insurance pay us? Ruth & David

This is a complicated question, but that’s OK ’cause I like complicated questions.

While it may seem like all free travel’s the same (since you’re getting the trip for free), the fact is that travel insurance plans don’t cover them the same way. Here are some tips so you can be prepared:

• For trip cost purposes, count frequent flyer tickets, award travel, vouchers, reward points & credit card miles as a $0 trip cost. The value is not equal to the money you save by using them. Your trip cost is only the taxes you pay when you exercise them.
• Many (not all) frequent flyer programs have a re-deposit fee to put the miles back into your account.
• Does your award travel, vouchers, reward points or credit card miles allow you to re-use them if you don’t use the travel you get with them?

You can get more information here:
http://www.tripinsurancestore.com/3/frequent-flyer.shtml