It’s one of the most common — and most dangerous — money mistakes in the first year abroad: arriving on a travel insurance policy and treating it as health coverage. The two products share a word and almost nothing else.
Travel insurance is trip protection: emergency medical treatment to stabilise you, medical evacuation, trip cancellation, lost bags. Its whole design assumes you have real healthcare somewhere else and just need to survive until you get back to it. That’s why it excludes almost everything a resident needs: routine care and checkups, management of chronic conditions, most pre-existing conditions, ongoing prescriptions, maternity, mental health, and anything after your policy’s trip length limit — often 30–90 days.
Expat health insurance is real health coverage that happens to live abroad: an annual, renewable policy covering routine care, specialists, hospitalisation, chronic condition management and prescriptions in your country of residence — the product visa officers mean when a long-stay visa requires “proof of health insurance.” A travel policy usually fails that test, and more importantly it fails the Tuesday-morning-specialist test that actual life consists of.
Scouting trips before the move. The moving journey itself. Trips back to the US once you live abroad (your expat policy may cover US visits only briefly or not at all — and US healthcare is the world’s most expensive place to be uninsured). Vacations to third countries, where a cheap travel policy neatly tops up your expat plan’s away-from-home limits.
Where each policy starts and stops — and who’s covered during the messy moving weeks — is precisely the kind of gap our Financial Relocation Roadmap exists to close.
This article is general information, not insurance advice. Policy terms vary by insurer and country — read the actual policy and verify visa requirements before buying.
================================================================================ END OF BATCH 4 (Currency + Insurance). Next: Batch 5 – Planning (A25-A30). ================================================================================Cover that worked at home often stops at the border, and the gap only shows up when you need it. We check what still applies and what needs replacing.
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