Like many of you, our family has a tradition of going to the beach (in our case, the Outer Banks, aka the OBX) every year on vacation. We rent a house and generally bum around for a week. In short, it’s heaven.

My mother-in-law is the most active (and amazing) person you’d ever want to meet. You would never guess her to be in her 70’s. Just a few weeks before vacation, we had the family over for dinner. While getting out of her car after arriving home, her foot caught on the strap of her backpack purse and she fell out of the car. I don’t know about you, but I can easily see this happening to me and have been paranoid about it ever since!

After a couple of days of being in pain (and being an active real estate agent who was walking on it constantly), she asked if I’d take her to the doctor. The doctors were sure there was no way she broke anything because they said the pain would be too much to walk on for days. Well, the x-ray said otherwise and the prognosis was 6-8 weeks in a boot and on crutches.

Needless to say, walking on sand was going to be a no-go. Not to mention going putt-putt, shopping and all of the other annual traditions we do. Fortunately, we had purchased travel insurance and were able to reschedule our trip with no penalty at all. We were refunded what we paid and rebooked for later in the season when she would be fully healed.

I used to be skeptical about travel insurance and I suppose I thought of it as one of those things you purchased for exotic and exceptionally expensive trips abroad. It had never occurred to me that it would something that could be handy for a run-of-the-mill beach vacation in the OBX. I’m lucky that my family knew better and opted into this coverage.

The holidays are upcoming and like you fellow beach bums, we usually shop the available houses and book during this time. I can assure you that we’ll be purchasing coverage again this year. Sure, you hope you never have to use it, but I have seen how important it can be.