I would rather sail in a storm than shop for insurance. I find it the most painful of processes.

Twice this week, I had insurers tell me, “you know what, we just don’t want to offer you insurance.” The first time was for house insurance. Now that we have found tenants to rent our house (YEAH!), I figured it was time to contact my home insurer and let them know our plans. I assumed there’d be some increase in our insurance costs. But, instead, they told us that the combination of renting the house and leaving the country gave them the willies (sorry Will). It worked out well for us, though. We ended up switching home and auto insurance and we stand to save a good bit of money as well.

The next day, I decided it was time to tackle medical insurance. We’d both made trips into the outer ring of hell (a.k.a. ServiceOntario) to advise of our plans and get our one-time waivers from the normal OHIP residency requirements. But, even with assurance that we’ll be covered on return, it turned out to be somewhat difficult to find an insurer who was interested.

Both of us recently underwent physicals and were declared healthy. We made our doctor aware of our trip plans and she dashed off a number of prescriptions for various potential ailments we might face along the way. But in spite of this, the first insurer I called said “no thanks” to the idea of providing us with emergency medical insurance.

It’s me, of course, and not Super Kath, that is the source of their concerns. Although I consider my health to be a great blessing, I do take a few daily medications to proactively stave off this or that condition. Add them up, factor in age, family history and the length of our travel plans, and it was enough to exceed the risk profile of at least one insurer.

I wasn’t too concerned though, as I understand that each insurer is picking and choosing their risks and some are only interested in low hanging fruit. My fruit hangs just right, thank you very much! A few more hours on the phone and we had quotes from 3 others willing to give us 365 days of emergency medical. So, we now have that box checked.

With the insurances in place, the house rented and the boat working again, my shoulders are starting to relax a bit more. Still oodles of stuff to do, but the major pieces are now all in place.