Coverage You Might Be Paying For Twice

Insurance is sold in pieces, and the pieces overlap. Some duplication is harmless and some is money spent on something you already have.

This is not a claim that you are wasting money. It is a list of places worth checking.

Rental car coverage at the counter

The most common one. Your personal auto policy typically extends to a rental in the United States and Canada, and many credit cards provide damage coverage when the rental is paid with that card.

The counter product still has a genuine advantage — it avoids a claim on your own policy and covers charges rental companies add that personal policies do not always cover. But buying it without knowing what you already have is buying blind.

Roadside assistance

Frequently held three times over: as an auto policy endorsement, through a motoring club membership, through a credit card, and sometimes through a vehicle manufacturer's programme during the warranty period.

They are not identical — towing distances and call limits differ — but paying for three is rarely deliberate.

Personal effects coverage on a rental

Belongings stolen from a rental car are generally covered by your homeowners or renters policy, subject to that deductible. The counter product duplicates it.

Travel medical coverage

Worth checking rather than assuming in either direction. Some health plans cover emergency care abroad and some do not; Medicare generally does not outside the United States. Some credit cards include travel medical benefits.

The gap that persists even when medical care is covered is medical evacuation, which is expensive and rarely included in a standard health plan. That is usually the part worth buying.

Extended warranties and equipment breakdown

Home equipment breakdown coverage, available as a homeowners endorsement, overlaps with manufacturer warranties and with home warranty contracts. All three can cover a failed appliance, with different exclusions and different deductibles.

Identity theft coverage

Available as a homeowners endorsement, through credit cards, through banks, and as a standalone subscription. The scope differs — some cover expenses of restoration, others provide monitoring, others both — but the overlap is common.

Accidental death coverage

Frequently held through an employer plan, a credit card, an auto policy, and sometimes a standalone policy. It is narrow coverage by nature, and holding several is rarely a deliberate decision.

Auto medical payments and health insurance

MedPay covers medical costs after an accident regardless of fault, which your health plan may also cover. Whether the duplication is worth it depends on your health plan's deductible — MedPay with no deductible can be genuinely useful alongside a high-deductible health plan, which makes this one of the more defensible overlaps.

An hour's audit

1. List every insurance-like benefit you have: policies, endorsements, credit card benefits, memberships, employer benefits.
2. Read your credit card benefits guides. Most people have never opened one.
3. Check your employer benefits summary for coverage you forgot you elected.
4. Look for the overlaps above.
5. For each, ask whether the second one covers a situation the first does not.
6. Cancel only where the answer is genuinely no.

What we are not saying

We are not telling you to cancel anything, and we do not sell insurance. What we are saying is that these overlaps are common, that credit card benefits in particular go unread, and that the audit takes about an hour and only needs doing occasionally.