The hidden traps of insurance for nomads
Imagine this:
You head off on your nomad adventure. You’ve got insurance through your credit card, your banking app, or maybe you searched for travel insurance and signed up online. You feel responsible and prepared.
Then something happens and you end up in the hospital.
Suddenly your insurance company starts talking about exclusions, limits, and zones and you realize the insurance you thought you had doesn't cover you when you need it most.
Unfortunately, stories like this happen all the time. The problem is that traditional insurance policies aren’t made for nomads. Here's what's really hidden in those terms and conditions:
Restrictions on how you travel
Trip duration limits: Travel insurance (like the kind you get from your credit card or banking app) often limits you to just 30 or 90 consecutive days abroad per "trip." Want to travel longer? You’ll have to return home first.
Policy duration limits: Travel insurance is typically limited to a maximum of 365 days. When your policy ends, you're no longer covered, and any illnesses or injuries that happened during your previous coverage become a "pre-existing condition" and excluded from future coverage.
Destination restrictions: Many insurance policies require you to select specific destinations when you sign up. If you travel outside of those countries, you may have limited or no cover at all. They may also require you to prove that you have legal residence in another country – something many nomads don't maintain.
Restrictions on your activities
Sports: Many insurance policies exclude or charge extra to cover sports, like surfing, diving, skiing, and climbing.
Scooter exclusions: Many insurance policies specifically exclude injuries from motorbike and scooter accidents. Or they only cover them if you have a valid local motorcycle license in each country you visit. But how many nomads renting a scooter in Bali actually have an Indonesian motorcycle license?
Work restrictions: Here's the kicker for digital nomads: some insurance policies even exclude "any paid or unpaid work of any kind." Got injured while working from a café in Lisbon? Technically, your coverage could be void because you were "working" when it happened.
What this means for nomads: The things that define nomad life – freedom of movement, working remotely, experiencing local culture through activities – are often the exact things that are excluded from insurance cover.
Restrictions on your health
Forced to go home: Most traditional travel health insurance policies we’ve looked at are designed to get you "stable enough to travel home," not to cover your full recovery after an accident or illness. They just patch you up and ship you back.
That might be fine, if you’re just on a short vacation and you’d prefer to see your regular doctor anyway. But as a nomad, you might not have any health care cover in your home country. And you might prefer to stay where you are and recover there, instead of cutting your trip short, just because you got sick or hurt.
Treatment limitations: In many travel health insurance policies, any treatment that can wait until you're home isn't covered. If you get sick or hurt, the insurance company decides whether it's "urgent enough" to cover abroad or if you need to wait until you fly back home for treatment.
Some policies cut off all medical coverage if you need more than 60 days of treatment abroad. Others limit medical expenses to just 180 days total – what happens if you have a serious accident in month one of a year-long trip?
Forced repatriation: Here's the nightmare scenario: If you break your ankle while living abroad in Thailand and need 3 months of physical therapy, you'd be forced to abandon your life there and return home or lose all coverage. Some policies explicitly state that coverage ends entirely if you refuse their repatriation recommendations.
What nomads need
After digging through hundreds of pages of fine print, here's what we learned:
Nomads need insurance built for our lifestyle from the ground up.
Insurance that:
Covers you worldwide, and lets you stay abroad as long as you want
Includes cover for sports, scooter rides, all your other activities
Covers comprehensive treatment, not just patching you up and shipping you home
Lets you stay covered long-term