What Nomads Ought To Know About Corona Virus (Before Its Too Late)

In this episode, I talk to Andrew Jernigan, CEO of InsuredNomads.com and NomadHealthInsurance.com about the Corona Virus pandemic.

Andrew has a better view than most, not only is he on top of these types of issues, his wife is a travel medical doc, physician and someone who attends the Emerging Viruses conference regularly.

If you're a nomad away from home, its VITAL you list to this episode.

Stay safe everyone.

• How bad is the Corona Virus pandemic?
• What can we expect in the coming months?
• Should nomads head home now, or stay where they are?
• Will the ATMS stop working and will we have a food shortage?
• How can we protect ourselves during this time?

And so much more...

Skye Khilji 0:20
This is Episode 4 where I talk to Andrew Jernigan of Insurednomads.com and NomadHealthInsurance.co.uk. This is a must listen for any nomad during this coronavirus pandemic. Not only is Andrew the CEO of an insurance company for nomads, his wife is a physician, a global health doctor, a travel med, and she goes to the emerging viruses conference every other year. They have a lot of insight to share for what's coming, how bad it could get and how nomads like us can prepare. Please listen to this episode and please share it this information could really make a difference in your life and in the lives of people that you love. All right. Well Andrew, thank you very much for joining me for First of all, and why don't you tell us who you are and where you're from?

Andrew Jernigan 1:05
Hi, Andrew Jernigan here and I am actually an American. But I left the US 20 years ago in 2000 and began working remotely around the world. So currently, I'm in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, married, three kids, my oldest just put on his college admission essay for his university that he was applying to that he was a global Nomad. So that's a snapshot of our family. My wife is a global health Doc, travel med physician, she goes to the emerging viruses conference every other year. And so yes, our world is wild right now with the corona virus pandemic.

Skye Khilji 1:47
Yeah, I think it's brilliant that not only do we have Andrew, who's the CEO of an insurance company, specifically for nomads, but the credentials of his wife, that she, you know, really covers these kind of things on a global level. It's really, really important for where we're at in the world. So Andrew, why don't you tell us from that perspective of so much knowledge and information that you have. Where are we right now? What is the situation of the world from your perspective?

Andrew Jernigan 2:13
Well, we have a lot of fear, which is never good for our mind and our bodies. We need to do our best during this time of isolation. And hopefully, we are isolating ourselves as much as possible to really work on our own personal growth. We have a lot of extra time on our hands. And that's not best spent by binge watching. TV shows but by bettering ourselves calming ourselves and working on personal growth. The things that we may have said we wanted to do at the first of the year, on those resolutions, the things we've wanted to get resolved, the relationships that need to get restored. So yes, I'll address the pandemic in the room, but Instead, what do you recommend? That's my first recommendation?

Skye Khilji 3:04
Yeah, absolutely love that. And I've echoed similar sentiments quite recently, there's always two sides to this, that, you know, we can we can start the day with that diet of fear and create anxiety for ourselves. Or we can choose a different paths, something a little bit more positive. And I just love that message of focus on that personal growth, bring something positive out of this situation. Now, I guess the flip side of that, Andrew, is there is a situation happening in the world. The question I guess I have is, is it something for us to be worried about to the level that we're worrying about it? Or is the media just blowing this up? And you know, everybody's in fear for not really that much of a reason? What do you think?

Andrew Jernigan 3:44
It depends on where you are. It is going to be bad in many places for many people, much more than we can imagine. And then others may not feel the effects that much at all. Those who don't have a lot of exposure. to large cities, who don't get a lot of visitors to the large cities may have limited exposure, but those from the large cities may be going out to their, their country to state their small farm to get away from it, then exposing the people in that village when they go out and buy eggs and buy supplies. So the effect will get to the rural areas as well.

But we've yet to see the impact in warmer climate countries. But the impact is going to be pretty tough. The numbers that we saw in China that we're seeing in Italy, of course, what we're seeing in Italy is much more than what we saw in China. So it's going to be interesting to see how this happens with each area. It is mutating. So it's, it's reacting differently as it does change. Every virus mutates as it hits different people with different illnesses. So and then is passed on and is mutated state. So we have a lot to see. But yes, this is this is to be taken seriously. It's not media hype.

Skye Khilji 5:08
Yeah. And just yesterday in anticipation of having you one I did kind of a canvassing of my audience, and I messaged a few of my followers in different countries just asking, you know, what's the situation there? I heard in Mexico, they're not really taking the situation that seriously and people are leaving, you know, nomads are leaving because they're scared. I've got other Nomad friends in Australia who are flying back to Canada. And the general sentiment seems to be that borders are going to get locked down and people are starting to fly home. On my side, my family told me come back to London and I said, Well, that sounds like a terrible idea. That's where all the people are, and you have higher cases than where I am in remote Romania. So how do nomads navigate that situation of you know, should we go or should we stay?

Andrew Jernigan 5:54
That's tough. I was just talking with one of our team members who's currently in Mexico City, considering there's Do they go back to the US? Well, pretty soon the airports in the US will be totally closed, not even letting nationals back in. So many countries will be facing that just because they don't want those who have been in high risk areas to come in. They don't want to be transporting it out either. So it's it's a tough scenario. I had my own son, who was in, in Europe, who passed through Switzerland and Spain to get to me in Rio de Janeiro this week, he left hours before the borders were closed, he would have been stuck there. And he's a 17 year old and would have probably been there for at least another six months because this is not going to pass swiftly.

So there's a ramification to those being trapped in a country outside their own. When the government declares a do not travel to that country, their travel insurance often becomes void and then if they ended up with a massive hospital bill because hospitals will still need to get paid. Even if you're getting treated for coronavirus.

Sure, there may be some grace but we're facing a global recession. So hospitals will want to send bills to you and will want to pursue you just as they would if you had broken your leg and left without paying your bill. So global medical insurance for those who are trapped, thinking, Oh, no, my travel insurance isn't going to cover me. It's the time to get a an international health insurance plan that does not have restrictions based on government declared do not travel advisories.

Skye Khilji 7:42
Okay, and how do we go about finding those policies?

Andrew Jernigan 7:45
Well, that is the scenario that we face with. When you're traveling internationally, you're looking for the best coverage for the least amount of money. So you get travel insurance oftentimes, but traveling insurances for a trip and we're finding ourselves trapped into long term stays not a trick.

So long term stay isn't a travel insurance type scenario. Travel insurances for a trip were international insurances for lifestyle now where to find it so that would be your traditional products like Cigna global, William Russell, Aetna, Nomad health insurance, which is actually a product of insured nomads our company and sadly you've got to make sure and read the policy wording or get them on the phone or if they have chat customer service chat with them to make sure the fine print the policy wording doesn't exclude government declarations for do not fly. And I know ours does not. So that's insured nomads. The three plans within them add health insurance. All right,

Skye Khilji 8:53
and can we just purchase the policy immediately? Are there any stipulations you know, like you don't have cover for the first time 10 days or anything like that, that we need to be aware of,

Andrew Jernigan 9:02
with the insured nomads global health plans called no matter health insurance, there is no waiting period it's instant issue. There's no medical underwriting. So there's no thing of Oh, you have this issue. Send us your medical records for that instant last year. No, it's issued immediately.

Skye Khilji 9:20
Okay, and that's for the health side of things, right? Correct. Okay. And then so then my other question is, for example, I have an Airbnb booked in Bucharest in the next I think three weeks and they messaged us and said, Look, you booked you know, within this time, if you can't travel, we'll give you a refund. But I'm guessing there's other nomads who have hotels booked and you know transfers, is there any coverage they can have or should have at this time to protect against that?

Andrew Jernigan 9:46
Actually, companies are removing the cancel for any reason, segments off of their policies. So going out and trying to find a policy that has cancelled for any reason is challenging at this point. They already have it, then they may be able to get a portion back. But again, it's a fine print issue. We don't offer it just because on a normal basis, it's not necessary. It's rare when you have to cancel something.

And it adds quite a bit of cost. And when you're pricing your offerings, you don't want to be more expensive for something that most people don't utilize. So in a case like this, it's it's a challenge because some countries are actually declaring, you cannot accept Airbnb guests. You have to kick them out now. And you can't do More Bookings. So as I'm not sure if you knew that, but hotels are closing and Airbnb is telling people you cannot receive your book guests.

Skye Khilji 10:45
Okay, that's interesting. And based on what you know, and you know, you're in a better position than most of us. Do you think nomads should be returning to their home countries at this point or is it really a case by case basis of where they are and you know where they live?

Andrew Jernigan 10:58
It is case by case But there are a few places where this will not affect you greatly. If you don't have good housing options where you're located, if you're not in a co living environment, I would get into it that is not managed by a large corporation, I would get in a mom and pop hotel, a local hotel instead of an Airbnb that will allow you to stay, I would move to a bed and breakfast type scenario.

If you're in Canada, North America, instead of a hotel chain. Marriott international has just laid off 10s of thousands of people as they prepare to close their hotels because they don't want infected rooms because the virus can live on sub surfaces for three days. So the cleaning process for their hotels, no liability that they take on if someone stays there, and then the next guest gets it because their hotel wasn't cleaned, their ramifications like that they're not closing for necessarily Protection reasons, but also because they might not be able to get supplies, their workers may not be able to come to work because their workers will be sick.

Skye Khilji 12:09
Yeah, I think there's two interesting things. And you touched upon the recession earlier. So there's kind of this Apex point of two competing forces. So one is the corona virus and that hysteria globally, that's, you know, causing problems in certain industries travel, especially as it has been hard hit. But there's also the economic situation, the Fed cutting interest rates close to zero, that 850 billion dollar QE package.

So it looks like we're heading into a period of austerity and a long, deep recession. And those two things are, you know, playing out at the same time. So with the insurance companies themselves that underwrite these policies, how do we know that we're protected from you know, from them having any issues and not being able to honor their commitments?

Andrew Jernigan 12:53
some excellent question. We'll have to see how time fares. This is Something we haven't faced in, actually in, in a century. So it's stock markets are having to close so that there's not so much Buying and selling. Of course, if you have the funds, now's the time to buy a lot of stock because they're quite low, because they will pick up again. But yeah, I wish I had the clear answer is we're at the beginning of a long journey, and the global recession has begun.

And it will be interesting to tell, but the insurance industry is one of the strongest financial powerhouses in the world that has the strongest reserves. So if you're dealing with excellent companies that have Lloyd's of London back policies, etc. You're looking at stability. If you're dealing with a smaller entity, we'll see with time but we should be fine with us. Everyone should come out okay, in the end, there should be a boom of course. industries are booming already. If you're selling things related to the medical industry to hygiene soaps, you're doing very well right now.

Skye Khilji 14:08
Yeah, hand sanitizer CEO's are literally rubbing their hands together right now.

Andrew Jernigan 14:12
Yes. No pun intended, no pun intended.

Skye Khilji 14:16
Yeah, I mean, I asked the question about insurances. You know, I spent 12 years in that industry. And absolutely compared to banks, I think insurance companies, just by nature, they have reserves, because they know that when things can go wrong, you know, there is a significant cost, and they need to be able to fund that.

So for people that don't know, there's the company that you purchase the policy from, and there's typically the underwriter that sits behind that, and they're the ones who are saying, you know, we'll take that piece of money from you, and we'll take care of you if something goes bad. So talk to me about how do we know which underwriters are the good ones so that from their claims handling that they're going to be able to pick up the phone and respond when we need them through to you know, they're financially secure enough for us to get the service that we need. How do we assess who the good underwriters and bad ones are?

Andrew Jernigan 15:03
There are various rating scales, whether it's they're usually a starting at a plus plus any A rated company for am best and other rankings, Fitch rankings etc. So that's generally the ranking scale that I would look at.

Skye Khilji 15:22
Okay, and you're saying Lloyd's of London in particular, I think the insured nomads and Nomad health insurance policies, all underwritten by Lloyds of London, is that right?

Andrew Jernigan 15:30
Yes. Different syndicates at Lloyds of London. And those go back to when ships were sailing out of London and one of the strongest insurance markets in the world is the Lloyds market.

Skye Khilji 15:44
Absolutely, absolutely. So I want to switch gears just a moment and talk about the duration of how long this is expected to last. So I'm in a fairly unique position. I have family that live in Milan who are on lockdown at the moment and they're right in the mix of it. My uncle has factories in China, and he has colleagues actually in Hubei province of Wuhan.

And what they're telling me is that the virus rates were increasing very quickly. And then when for lockdown was imposed, it took about 15 days for that, you know, Spike to tail off and things to come back to normal. So some people are talking about six months, one year, some of the politicians and the governments and others are saying, hey, look at that graph. When you do a lockdown, it kind of tails off after 15 days. So where are you on that timeline? What do you think is reasonable and the kind of most likely outcome?

Andrew Jernigan 16:37
Well, it's it's hard to compare other countries to China. They already monitor movement. They deployed drones to say put your mask on. You've probably seen those things in the media. It's already a very tight structure, very obedient society, to where if they're said do not leave your house. You don't leave your house or you get thrown into a vehicle and arrested because you're breaking the law. So as you've seen that happen, you can't compare that to what would happen in London because if someone if a teenager wants to go out, they're going to go out.

They're not afraid of getting arrested or detained. So the 15 day delay isn't an accurate scale because they had a lockdown. unlike anything that could have happened except in a structured government, to say it politely. So for that reason, they controlled the spread.

We have not controlled spread at all. We closed down the schools and workplaces too late. There are many countries that are not controlling anything. For instance, in Rio de Janeiro, San Paulo, Brazil. The first cases that were reported were Italians that came to Carnival that were on the streets. where there were hundreds of thousands of people during parties, and they spread it. No one's being tested still in Brazil, unless they're presenting severe symptoms and go to a hospital.

So it's here. It's being spread by a lot of asymptomatic people for the last two weeks. And we're going to see a rapid spike. And that's just one case. So yeah, the 15 day, China containment can't be replicated the way that they did it, just because we don't have the controls in place of our society that they do.

Skye Khilji 18:34
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I'm not sure if you're familiar with the UK response to the situation. It was kind of interesting. The Prime Minister Boris Johnson initially said, we're going to allow the population to catch coronavirus so we build up a herd immunity. And then you know, two days later, complete turnaround after I think it was Imperial College London showed, you know, 250,000 people could die and he put the Right. So on that idea,

Andrew Jernigan 19:01
they immediately issued the fact that the police are authorized to detain someone who's infected with.

Skye Khilji 19:08
Exactly. Yes, very interesting. This morning, I've seen images of tanks on the back of trucks going up the highway. And I've also seen soldiers in military uniform on the high streets of clap in London. Now, I don't know if these are real if they're from today. We never know with social media, but it looks like they're moving to enforce a lockdown. And definitely the cases seem to be increasing in the UK. So I'm not really sure what we can expect. what's what's your view of what's happening over there in the UK and in London.

Andrew Jernigan 19:38
They are preparing for as much control as they can organize as they saw China do, which gives me chills as I just said it. You saw the control that China put in place. We have never seen that except in wartime of World War Two, that we had food riots. And no one could leave their houses. We're facing that.

Skye Khilji 20:06
Yeah, absolutely. Do you think it's gonna get to that point where you know the stores run out of food, the ATM stop spitting out the dollar bills? How likely is that scenario?

Andrew Jernigan 20:16
quite likely since the ATM machines have to be refilled? And if people aren't going to work, if they've been told to work from home, then they're not going to be going and refilling the bank machines if there's a central movement for delivery of goods, but what goods will be delivered? If we're in a limited manufacturing scale, that means whatever is in the warehouse can get delivered. But are they continuing manufacturing? So your cottage industry goods need to get going now. Those who can make butter while the sun shines shouldn't begin making butter right?

Skye Khilji 21:01
Yeah, I saw Amazon hire 100,000 new staff because they're anticipating, you know, home deliveries increasing. But you make a good point, they can only deliver the inventory.

Andrew Jernigan 21:10
They're also anticipating a lot of employees not showing up

Skye Khilji 21:14
for work. Uh huh. So it's a mitigation rather than, you know, increasing that capacity. That makes a lot of sense.

Andrew Jernigan 21:21
Yes.

Skye Khilji 21:22
And just in terms of the remote work side of things, I'm interested, there's a lot of people who have this feeling now that actually remote work is something that's always been possible. But the corporation's you know, weren't really at that point yet. And they've now had to I have friends whose companies were giving them laptops two weeks ago, and they're now realizing that they can work remote. So you know, once this thing's all over, I do wonder if we're going to see an explosion of remote workers even beyond what we've already seen before this pandemic.

Andrew Jernigan 21:49
Yes, that's the positive sides of this in that companies will be able to realize that, hey, this person can easily do their job remotely. Let's cut costs and allow them to continue You're working remotely.

Skye Khilji 22:02
Yeah, I think that will make a huge difference. I mean, our economy has just been propped up by, you know, money being pumped into it for so long. It's been a huge bull market and the price earnings ratios have just been out of whack for so long. I do wonder if you know, whilst This is a terrible thing that's happening, the flip side of that is, the world starts to recalibrate in terms of how it produces values through its companies.

Andrew Jernigan 22:25
Yes, because technologies will be developed. Current platforms will be improved by the drastic increase in improvement and the feedback they're getting. It's it's going to advance the technologies and the remote workforce movement more than ever, Peter Levels, who's written an excellent book called make the bootstrappers Guide.

He also has been an advocate of the digital nomad movement. He has Nomadlist.com - He said that by 2035, he said this about six years ago, we'd have 1 billion digital All nomads, I think with this fertilizer of required work from home will definitely hit that number.

Skye Khilji 23:09
Yeah, absolutely. I definitely see that happening. I did a post about a week ago, which was 300 companies hiring remotely right now in 2020. And since this all happened, the traffic to that post just completely blew up. A lot of people are now jumping onto Upwork and the freelance platforms to try and find that remote work.

But the flip side of that is a lot of my clients, they're cutting their advertising budgets, they're seeing traffic to their websites plummet. So there's kind of two sides to that from your side being in you know, insurance and specifically for nomads. How's things for you? Are the phones ringing as much as the traffic to the website where it is? What's the situation on your site,

Andrew Jernigan 23:47
our web traffic, our chat through WeChat, WhatsApp, telegram, discord, Reddit. Everything has gone up ridiculously much Our site traffic has gone up, over 1,000%. purchases are wonderfully high as we get to protect more people, which is always a good thing that people have protection, because that means they weren't adequately covered previously.

Skye Khilji 24:18
Definitely, I think sometimes these are the things that just force people to look at their situation. So it's just great that we've got a company like yours out there. And you know, great that there's finally somebody tailoring these solutions to nomads, because we do have uniqueness. Yes.

Andrew Jernigan 24:33
You know, it's it's one of those things where digital nomads often don't even consider the fact that they should have life insurance. They don't consider the fact that if they were to die next year at 28 years old, their mom their dad, they might actually need funds left to them to pay for their nursing home or their long term care someday.

That is available as a digital nomad. And it's Non expensive for an international term life insurance policy. Having a disability policy there were you know, if you lost your eyesight due to some chemical exposure, or you lost your hands due to an accident, there goes the consulting work.

So in International Disability plan to where money would keep coming in income protection, something that oftentimes digital nomads Don't think about. And it's available. It's it's not about the surance. Yeah, it's not about the insurance. I could care less about the insurance, but I care about the person, their families. And if, you know, I've got three kids and a wife. I want to make sure that if for some reason I go tomorrow, they're not out begging for bread. Yeah,

Skye Khilji 25:46
that definitely came through the audience don't know this. But a few days ago, maybe about a week ago, I got an email from Andrew just saying somebody I care about and respect. I'm just checking that you're okay. And that really sums up Andrew and insured nomads and That's why I wanted to get him on the, you know, it really is about protecting nomads and people that travel and you know, even in that comment and that moment that he just shared with us. I myself was just realizing, hey, when I worked in corporate, if I died, then four times my annual salary would go to my family. And as a nomad, we don't have that. And we tend to be a little bit more kind of cop ADM, live for today. So Andrew, what would you say are those just you know, foundational policies that we have to have to make sure our affairs are taken care of

Andrew Jernigan 26:29
Global health insurance, for sure. Especially if you're thinking of maternity benefits at some point, because travel insurance never covers that. So you know, you may not be married, you may not be your partner may not be thinking of starting a family yet. But global health insurance definitely if that's a consideration, even if it's not, not to live on travel insurance.

Secondly, a base Term Life Insurance, whether you're leaving 100,000, even if you think, okay, my family doesn't need it, go ahead and go to your favorite charity to get half of it. But you don't know whether or not your family will need it or not. If you're, you know, you may be that's the sort of where you may need to leave a million to keep your company going to fulfill the obligations of your business so that your your clients aren't left hanging.

So it's that's one. So I just leave it at those two for the essentials. You know, it's tough when you say what you definitely need. You know, for some reason, My hands were cut off tomorrow, I would sure wish I had disability insurance.

Skye Khilji 27:40
Absolutely, absolutely. I think that's really helpful and something that all of us, myself included, probably need to start looking at in a bit more detail. As I said, we, we kind of live for today. And we get so focused on our projects and our travel that, you know, we forget these fundamentals and I think when we spoke the first time it was maybe six to eight weeks ago.

You shared with me a story of somebody who had I think it was a motorbike they'd fallen off of and hurt their leg and maybe you can refresh my memory, but it was some horrific costs that they had to find from a hospital share that story with us, Andrew.

Andrew Jernigan 28:12
Yes, so sad Actually, it's a friend of mine that's was living in a Southern African country, doing incredible charity work. And, you know, they had messaged me, talk to other people on our team and had said, you know, give us a price for health insurance. So it turned out it was for he and his wife and kid it was gonna be about 3000 bucks a year. And they'd have, you know, probably, I think it was 1,000,005 and medical maximum benefits during that year for 3000 bucks to cover the three of them.

And, sadly, someone in traffic hit his bike, crushed his leg. He had to be medivac out because he was in a small town in the Southern African country and his hospital. weren't paid, because he didn't have coverage is the Air Flight.

He paid a private company for that, which Luckily, since he was with an NGO and other NGO had a small plane, but still, there were gas costs involved in an NGO had to pick up out of charity. Those fuel costs of several thousand. And all total they had 16,000 in debt, which sure it's not much for a crushed leg.

But 16,000 made them have a GoFundMe account. And they work long term with the charity. That's the last thing you want to do. When they could have spent 3000. They had to go to folks saying, look, we weren't responsible. We didn't take care of the necessities of life. Can you bail us out now since we weren't smart? Because I'm sure many people said Why didn't you have insurance?

And sadly, the same couple now, still doesn't have insurance. But it's put the priorities of okay we need to have food in the fridge. Versus we need to make sure we can actually eat food that we have in the fridge. Because if there was an accident, you're in the hospital on a feeding tube because you can't even eat the food you have in your fridge. That's rough. And my heart goes out to them. But I'll I'll turn the flip side.

One of our clients was working in an East African country, flew to Thailand to visit family. His annual policy because he was in his early 20s was less than $1,000 a year. He had an excess of 500. So he had a headache went to the hospital in Thailand. They found out he had a brain tumor could not even fly to Bangkok because of the altitude emergency surgery to remove a huge tumor from his brain. Got back to the US went to Johns Hopkins said excellent surgery.

He was out his 500 excess and less than $1,000 for his annual premium That's incredible. Three years later, he's still our client married, you know, making sure they have maternity on their policy. That's the good side of the fact that this guy perfectly healthy, never anything in his life. And all of a sudden with a headache, I found out he had a brain tumor, because he had a global health policy. That policy is renewable every year, if he had had travel insurance, sure, they would have cared for his need. But when that policy ended, that condition would be considered a pre existing condition and excluded on his next policy.

Skye Khilji 31:35
It's just amazing. I love that you shared kind of both sides of that situation. The couple that had the $16,000 bill, I mean, you know, for them, maybe it wasn't that bad. But for a freelancer who's making 2030 bucks an hour, that's going to take a long time to work that off, especially after the you know, they pay their expenses. But what do you say to that Freelancer? That digital nomad who says hey, you know, I'm still kind of new in this, I can't afford a few thousand dollars a year. What's your message to those guys?

Andrew Jernigan 32:05
Well, you know, if you're looking at 3000 a year, divide that out, it's 250 a month. Sure you look at it and think, wow, that hurts. That's 250 a month when you're staying in low cost housing. Airbnb it 30 a day, or 15 a day. So you're spending 15 a day on housing. You're spending, what, 450 a month. That's almost twice what you would spend on global health insurance. It's just priorities. How much do you value your family who may have to help you out and raise $100,000 for a medical bill or $16,000 for a medical bill? Do they even have it to give it to you? It's tough. I've done that.

Over the years I've traveled without coverage. I've lived in countries for extended periods of time without coverage. So I don't say it without compassion. Then Okay, the money is not there. How do we face this, but I've also really sacrificed at times when we couldn't afford it.

When we lived paying 876 bucks a month to Atlanta national for a family plan for five years. We paid them over 60,000 bucks while we lived in an African country as a family, and we hardly had to use it at all. But it's the peace of mind because we saw people who really had to use there's just months ago, we had a family that their premium as a family with several kids was $5,000 a year. But their 14 year old got malaria medivac to Joburg five weeks on life support made it through it, but their bill was $88,000. They sacrificed they actually this happened when their policy was on in a grace period between renewals and we were able to go ahead and say make your payment today and we will get that flight to get your kid to Joburg.

Skye Khilji 34:03
That's incredible. You guys are the real heroes in this, I really believe that. I think nomads just needs this kind of service. It's something we've been without for so long. And I just really want to take that time to acknowledge you guys for that. And thank you for creating this service. Andrew,

Andrew Jernigan 34:19
Thank you for having us on. It's really I want to go back you state this so well through your Instagram, your Twitter, guys, work toward keeping yourselves calm and in peace so that you can make the right decisions whether it's about insurance, or whether or not it's about making the next accommodation plan. The next destination decision. Stay in peace. No matter what comes to you. Hurry is your enemy. I'm 47 and 40 years old, I had a heart attack and open heart surgery. I can't Out of that, after reading a book called soul keeping, implementing that mantra that hurry is my enemy. We have to be radical at eliminating curry from our life.

Skye Khilji 35:12
Yeah, definitely. I think I can relate to that Harry is the state that a lot of us digital nomads and freelancers live with, because you know, there's so many different projects and so much to do. And it's nice thank you for for mentioning my Instagram, my Twitter, I've been sharing that message of choose love, not fear. And I actually recorded an episode about how I was responding to Corona virus and I was talking about when you have fear, the amygdala in the brain is all jacked up and you can't respond, you're reacting and it puts you in a worse position. So I definitely love that message. And I completely resonate with that message of avoid the Hurry, try and keep the anxiety down. And you know, that's why I wanted you on because you're somebody who to me as rational is logical is calm, and I think that's a voice that the world needs at this time.

Andrew Jernigan 36:00
Thank you, you know you're free the wage slave if you're looking for you on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc free the wage slave. But I want to go back to that if we run from being a slave to wages to being a slave to our own calendar, when we go as an independent worker, location, independence, remote worker, etc. We have to avoid being a slave to our own projects. That's often what happens is that from being tied to a desk, to a cubicle, to a role that we don't have freedom with, we become tied to our laptop for 16 hours a day because we overcommit in effort to actually pay the bills. That's the exact opposite of what the message is meant to be. In being free from being a wage slave. It's also being free from being a slave to anything. So we must actually love ourselves, care for ourselves and close the laptop, turn the phone off. And breeze.

Skye Khilji 37:09
Absolutely agree. That's just so, so important. And I'm laughing to myself as you're saying that I send an email every Sunday newsletter and it's kind of a roundup of what did I read this week? What am I learning and you know what happened? And my uncle replied and said free the wage slave, you've gone from nine hours to 16 Where's your freedom? And it really hit me in that moment. Like, you know what, actually, he's right. And, you know, I can make the argument for you, but I love this stuff. It's my passion. It doesn't feel like work. But I've really realized in that moment, hey, you know, I do need to slow it down a little bit. I think that's so so important. That message that you shared.

Andrew Jernigan 37:43
Thank you so much. I am honored to be on with you today and look forward to hearing your next guest. This is you've created an excellent series and you know, everything you always do comes out great. So I commend you and in your work and You know, with profit partnerships as well, it's exciting, you really make good things happen.

Skye Khilji 38:06
Thank you, Andrew. I appreciate that from somebody that I respect. And I just really want to echo on the other side of that is insured nomads.com, Nomad health insurance. Everybody, just go there, even if you think that you don't need it yet, go there, take a look, get in the chat with these guys. Give them a call and just talk about your specific situation. I think you can tell from Andrew, there's not going to be a hard sell. They actually really care about you and your situation. And I really, really encourage everybody to do that. So Andrew, as we wrap up, where can people find you and any final words that you'd love to share with us?

Andrew Jernigan 38:39
connect with me on Twitter, Andrew Jernigan on Twitter, and find us on your favorite channel as insured nomads.

Skye Khilji 38:49
All right, Andrew, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. We appreciate you.