HELP ME CLARK!

ROSEMARIE:

We are scheduled for a cruise to Antarctica and the company is suggesting that we get insurance, $528 per person, for emergency events: lost luggage, illness, etc. We are 65 years old and have no health conditions. What do you think?

CLARK:

HLN's Money Expert Clark Howard

If you're going to go on a cruise and your inability to show up at the port would mean you forfeit all your money - which is almost always what it does mean - you should buy trip insurance.

But don't buy it from the cruise line. You want to buy it from an insurance company. And the best website to shop the policies is insuremytrip.com.

Now, the coverages will vary and the exclusions will be different one company to another, so take the time to sit down and compare the exclusions that various companies have and, in turn, the coverages.

The typical price, though, for trip cancellation or trip interruption insurance is 6% of the cost of the trip.

Vacations are fabulous. You wake up late and eat a ton of food. You see new places or reacquaint yourself with old friends. You take time to breathe, relax and if you're lucky, you never, ever think about work.

But what happens when the lazy days are over and you return to the stress and turmoil of your job? We've got a few tips on how to ease yourself back into work:

1. Prepare before you leave. Workbloom.com recommends assigning tasks to colleagues before you jet off on your vacay. This way when you come back, you won't be overwhelmed. And greenliving.suite101.com suggests cleaning your house and desk before you leave. Coming back to a mess can only increase your stress level.  The site also says this:

No doubt you will eat good food during your vacation, so plan a fine dining experience for your return. You might leave a good quality pre-prepared meal, or a menu of a favorite takeout or delivery restaurant.

Consider taking an extra day off work to unwind before returning to the office. Prepare treats for the day, order a book or DVD to greet you when you return, or plan a meal with friends. Seeing friends and enjoying your home are great compensations of the return from vacation, so make the most of these by planning ahead.

Think you're too busy to ever plan ahead? See our special on how to have it all.

2. Take it slow. It's an old trick to come back mid-week, or right before a long weekend. Having a few days off right after your return will help ease you back into the work flow. But you can also keep your calm by tackling tasks one at a time. An article from EHow.com says this:

Work at your own pace. No one expects a whirling dervish on the first day back from vacation, or even the first week back. Take advantage of this fact and work at your own pace until you are up to speed with the rest of the office once again.

The site also suggests taking frequent breaks - either for food, water or fresh air. Plus Helium.com recommends thinning your email out before you arrive in the office. Taking time the night before your return will make the morning seem that much less overwhelming.

For many of us the main curse of returning to work is arriving to an in-box crammed with e-mails. For those people who can access their work e-mails from home, it might be worth devoting an hour or so the previous night to reading some of your backlog of e-mails. Okay, this is slightly eating into the last hours of your holiday but it may be worth it to be able to hit the ground running on the first day back.

3. Plan your next vacation. Whoa, you just got back - don't go asking your boss for more days just yet. But planning a weekend getaway or a day trip to the spa will help you hold on to the blissful feeling just a little bit longer.

Remember when you were a kid walking through the toy store and you spotted a toy you just had to have? And you felt the aching desire to immediately possess that exact G.I. Joe soldier or souped-up Barbie Dream Car?

Well, as you all know, I’m still a kid at heart, but instead of toys, these days I'm into more grown-up, traveling-news-correspondent-friendly items, like luggage. (That's a sad revelation, maybe, but true.)

For a long time, my bag of choice was a small Briggs and Riley case that had just enough room to hold everything I needed - my chargers, laptops, iPod, Kindle, makeup, toiletries, passport, pens, and a notepad - and still fit under the seat of the smallest commuter jet. It was almost perfect - except I had no room to carry a book, newspaper, or my personal camera. I needed a new bag.

And the one that caught my eye after many months of searching was a beauty made by Tumi. It was good-looking, compact, functional - the dream bag. But I didn’t buy it. I thought the Tumi was way too expensive (and this was pre-recession!). Instead, I trekked over to Target and bought a similar bag for about one-tenth of the price.

And even though the Target bag did the job just fine, my Tumi treasure-bag stayed with me. When I passed by the Tumi store, which is too-conveniently located just downstairs from the CNN studios in New York, I would look longingly in the window, imagining myself at a JFK gate, laughing merrily, holding a piping-hot coffee in one hand and my perfect Tumi bag in the other - the envy of all the other passengers. Then I would look down at the bag I actually bought, and sigh...

Well I must have dropped enough hints, because eventually my best friend bought me a bag from Tumi.com. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the exact model I wanted. So, receipt in hand, I headed to the Tumi store to exchange the bag for the one I wanted, which, as it turned out, was $100 cheaper. The person at the store offered me store credit, but I wanted the $100 to be refunded to my best friend's credit card (I’m a really great friend.) The Tumi guy said it wasn’t possible. To get a refund, my friend would have to send the bag back to Tumi.com and pay for shipping.

That's a bad policy at any time, but especially in a recession. And, with companies looking to cut costs in any way they can, my bet is that many are thinking that customer service is expendable. Well it's too bad: I really liked Tumi and their products, but I find the idea that I have to spend someone else's cash just because they bought me the wrong gift indefensible.

Now all of you readers have had some notable customer service interaction I am sure - whether good or bad - and I'd like to hear about them. E-mail me your customer service stories at ali@cnn.com so we can reward the good companies and reprimand the bad.

Oh, and to be fair, below is the response I got from Tumi. My friend still hasn't gotten her $100 back:

"Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Please see our response below.

Tumi is committed to providing our customers with superior product, exceptional service and a unique brand experience.

We are continually looking to upgrade our systems and policies in order to achieve this goal. Given the nature of our company owned vs partnered stores and our e.commerce relationship with our web provider, all of our systems are not currently aligned to allow for a seamless transaction/return exchange at the point of sale.

We are currently assessing and upgrading our limitations in order to accomplish this goal, and apologize that we are not in a position today to rectify your situation.

We will, however, do whatever we can to make sure your TUMI experience is superior. Please let us know what you would like to satisfy your need."

My response to Tumi is that I don't want special favors. I'll stick with the credit, but I hope they'll change their policy willingly.

Ali Velshi is CNN's chief business correspondent

For anyone traveling by air lately, you don't need me to tell you all the problems plaguing the airlines. Sky-high oil prices have them scrambling to pass the buck on to us passengers. We're paying higher base fares, and extra for fuel surcharges, baggage check-in and food and drinks onboard flights. Now, even JetBlue has jumped into the fray, by charging us for pillows and blankets we used to take for granted at our seats. Next, they'll even charge us for those little mini-packets of pretzels!

To add insult to injury, airline service is deteriorating even as we pay more to fly. I just returned from a two-week vacation overseas, and the flying portion of the trip was anything but relaxing. On both legs of my trip, I experienced delays that caused me to miss connecting flights, forcing me to stay overnight in third cities I didn't even want to visit!

Look, airport delays are nothing new, but here in the U.S. some airports offend more than others. As the airlines cut back on flights and ditch less profitable routes to curb their losses, more passengers will have to fly through airport hubs just to get to where they're going. That means delays on one end or the other (and even in the middle) can cost you time and even money (think paying for overpriced airport food or staying overnight while you wait for another flight).

So, before you plan your next trip, wouldn't it be nice to know how airports rank in on-time performance? Here's a summary of the best and worst of the nation's airports from FlightStats, a flight tracking service, based on its survey of flights in July:

Best performing airports:

1) Salt Lake City's airport has the best on-time rate of any airport in the U.S. A whopping 86 percent of flights into Salt Lake City came in on time, 12 points above the national average.

2) The Memphis, Tennessee, airport comes in at second place. Memphis saw an on-time arrival rate of 84 percent of its flights.

3) Oakland, California, outside San Francisco, came in third place. Eighty-three percent of flights arrived there on time, almost 9 percentage points above the national average.

Worst performing airports:

1) Kennedy International Airport in New York City has the worst on-time rate of any U.S. airport. Only 55 percent of flights arrived into JFK on time in July.

2) New York's La Guardia is not much better than JFK.Almost a full 16 percentage points below the national average for major airports, only 58% percent of LaGuardia's flights came in on time.

3) Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey comes in third place as the worst performing airport. Only 60 percent of flights into this airport, which also serves the New York area, arrived on-time in July.

Besides the New York area, Miami International Airport and Boston's Logan International had low rates of success with on-time arrivals. And as for the specific airlines themselves, things have changed since June, when American Airlines was the worst on-time performer - now, it's JetBlue Airways.

According to FlightStats, only 65 percent percent of JetBlue's flights arrived on time, a full ten percentage points below the industry average. If you're looking for a little more reliable timetable, check out Frontier Airlines (on time 86 percent percent of the time) and Southwest, who was tops among the major carriers with a success rate of 83 percent.

Otherwise, be sure to schedule in some extra time between those connecting flights, and try to avoid flying into the New York area, unless you're coming to visit me!

We've been telling you that it seems Americans are cutting back or changing their driving habits because of high gas prices, and now the Federal Highway Administration has confirmed it - 40 billion miles worth of cutbacks to be exact. That's equal to driving the length of the equator more than one and a half million times!

And that's just over the past 7 months, with 9.6 billion of those miles lost this past May alone. While this is easing the demand for fuel and reducing emissions, it's not all good news - it's been seriously cutting into the tax funds available for highway maintenance, and that's not a plus for anyone, whether you drive a lot these days or not.

1) Keeping up with the wear and tear of the nation's roads. The pavement across the country has been rated "not acceptable" on one out of every seven miles of road, according to the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission.

2) Bridge maintanace. This came roaring to the forefront of the DOT's agenda when a Minneapolis bridge collapsed last summer, killing 13 people. Even still, about 25 percent of bridges in the U.S. remain either "functionally obsolete" or "structurally deficient."

3) Upkeep of rail networks and expanding mass transit. Taking mass transit has been a good alternative to high gas prices, but with less people driving, there isn't as much money coming from gasoline-tax revenue allocated to mass transit to help fund necessary expansions; and that's a problem, because the American Public Transportation Association reports increased mass-transit ridership of at least 30 percent in some areas.

So it seems to be a pretty vicious cycle - we are driving less because of high gas prices but in doing so we are hurting our other options, like mass transit, as well as our safety with less funding for projects like updating bridges. Construction costs are already higher to begin with, thanks to the high price of asphalt and other materials.

The National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission estimates a needed $225 billion a year just to meet the country's transportation needs; right now, we are spending at around 40 percent of that number. Congress is working on legislation that will provide some aid to these construction projects, such as the $1 billion for bridge repair that was passed on Thursday.

But when the estimated amount the DOT needs is 225 times that, it might just be too little too late.

The airlines are at it again. Fares are soaring sky-high because the carriers are hit hard by the price of oil, now averaging $130 a barrel. American Airlines just "succeeded" in lobbing an additional $20 fuel surcharge to it's already higher airfares. In other words, all the other major domestic carriers followed its lead, an instituted the same surcharge increases.

That makes this the 13th "successful" fare hike, out of 19 attempts so far this year. To add insult to injury, United just joined American and U.S. Airways in instituting a $30 charge to check in just one bag. So, we can safely assume passengers will now do everything in their power to cram everything into their carry-on bags.

So, how do you stuff your carry-on without overwhelming the plane’s overhead compartments? I've put together some tips on how to pack your carry-on for your next trip, saving you space and money:

1) Re-evaluate exactly what you're going to need. Check the weather report right up until you leave and pack accordingly; and, purge all those "just-in-case" clothes that you're probably not going to wear anyway.

2) Wear your jacket and heaviest pair of shoes to the airport. Packed shoes and coats add bulk and weight to your bag so wear them instead; and, don't forget to use the coat pockets to store smaller items.

3) Take advantage of compressor bags. Vacuum-sealed bags work wonders: you can create up to 80 percent more packing space, depending on the model.

4) Give in and buy the little 3-ounce bottles for liquids. Then pack them in the outer pockets of your carry-on in the TSA-required clear plastic bag, for easy access at security.

Now if you've got the extra space, try to throw in some snacks and grab a drink to take on the plane once you get past security. You'll need that, because most air carriers are now charging extra for on-board snacks and drinks. So, what's next? Will they charge us extra just to go to the restroom? Safe travels everyone!

It’s safe to say that air travelers are fed up with chronic delays and flight cancellations.   Look out, because the frustration at airports is bound to get worse this year. Oil priced at $140 a barrel is forcing the airlines to consolidate, cut jobs, cancel routes and retire fuel-guzzling aircraft, increasing the likelihood of air delays that cost us all.

According to the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, 2007 was one of the costliest years on record, totaling some $41 billion in losses to passengers, airlines and travel-related industry.

This is how those costs broke down:

1) Additional airline operation costs totaled $19.1 billion.   The air delays cost the airlines in extra staffing, maintenance and fuel costs for 740 million gallons of jet fuel wasted on idling planes.

2) “Spillover” costs to the economy totaled $9.6 billion.   Air delays cost other industries that rely on air traffic, like restaurants, hotels, retailers and public transportation.

3) Value of passenger time lost totaled $12 billion. Delays cost passengers billions in time that travelers would have otherwise spent on business and play. Air delays cost everyone, and with the airlines suffering from high fuel costs—and oil prices now sky high—Americans can expect to pay even more in 2008 to fly more crowded planes idling on the tarmac.