Poll: Do you have a Bank Safety Deposit Box?

[stephenson]

Yep.

Numismatic coins and jewelry.

 

[Telly]

I had quite a few friends lose their homes to the Santa Rosa fires in 2017. A couple of them had fireproof safes at home, and the safes were completely destroyed in the fire. This was a huge regional fire that burned thousands of houses to the ground, though, with no attempt to fight the fire at individual houses. I suspect that the safes are intended for situations where a home partially burns and the fire is put out by the fire department, not where the home burns unimpeded to the ground.

We have a bank safe deposit box, and also a home safe. The home safe is a smaller business safe with a 2 hour fire rating that I installed. The instructions took great pains to say that it is "fire resistant", not "fire-proof". Also that media memory should not be stored in it, as the internal temp can rise high enough in the 2 hours to destroy it. Also to let firemen know where the safe is if present at fire. I had talked with our fire chief at the time about residential fires. He said that unless there is a suspicion that someone is still inside, most residential fire fighting is containment, not structure saving. No entering a burning house to fight from inside. He said that if someone pointed out where a safe was, they could douse that area more after they had a pretty good handle on the fire. And that they could help in the recovery of the safe during ember watch time afterwards, if it would not compromise an investigation as to the source of ignition. And only if it was safe for them to do so, no roof or second story about to collapse on them.

People have told me that they "have a fireproof box at home", and they have been portable boxes with a lid that opens. The only way those are fire-anything is if the person is there, and grabs the box on their way out!

So your suspicions about safes is right on!

 

[mrfeh]

We don't have one, but we should. Primary concern is digital assets that aren't backed up off-site.

 

[mrfeh]

I'd hope someone who had a fireproof safe and had their house burn down will post.

My feeling, and the little news I got from CA fires was that fireproof safes just burn/char everything inside as they are only good for 1 hour at relatively low temps.

I am eligible for a free safety deposit box, but will admit, being too lazy to go claim and use it. Pretty stupid of me really.

This is why we haven't pulled the trigger on a fire-proof safe. I started to do research, and it was very fuzzy whether paper/hard drives would survive.

 

[FLSUnFIRE]

I have a "fireproof and waterproof" box in the house and retain copies of documents at my parents house out of state as well. I have a monitored alarm and am 3-5 blocks from police and fire. I have minimal valuables so any thief will be largely disappointed.

 

[JoeWras]

Yes. It is free since DW used to work there (retirement benefit).

I answered "not sure why" because I'd like to migrate most of the stuff out of there. What is important is an inventory and set of photos of our house and stuff in case we have a complete loss. What isn't important are some coins. They have value, but I'd like to just get rid of them for a fair price. I'm done with the coin thing.

 

[misanman]

We have one but I'm considering dropping it. We have a bunch of silver coins, some important papers, and our rotating data backup. Increasingly using cloud backup so maybe we will eventually stop using the box. Currently, thousands of photos are not really part of our cloud backup so our off site backup for those is in the box.

 

[racy]

Yes, we have one in a bank for important documents. When I researched fire proof boxes I was not impressed with how much heat at various lengths of time they would be effective. So, we think something off-site is better for us.

 

[LRDave]

We gave it up years ago. I can't think of single document we have that can't be replaced relatively easily. All data is backed up in the cloud. No jewelry that DW would for some reason want to squirrel-away at a bank and no coins.

 

[mountainsoft]

I have a safe deposit box at our bank where I keep a computer backup drive and our passports. I backup to a local external drive nightly, then swap that drive with the one in our safe deposit box about once a month.

Remember, there are more risks than fire, including floods, tornado, hurricanes, theft, landslides, etc. In the case of a backup drive, the drive itself can fail even if you don't encounter a major disaster. Multiple backups in multiple locations is key.

I do have a small fire safe here at home too. We keep things like our wedding certificate, death certificates, home records, etc. in it. Important papers for sure, but nothing that couldn't be replaced if needed. Whenever possible, I scan and digitize these papers so I have a digital copy I can backup regularly.

The home fire safe is only rated for one hour, so it certainly wouldn't survive a forest fire if we weren't here to take the safe before the fire got here. It's also not rated for media. It may prevent paper from burning, but flash drives or optical discs don't stand a chance. They do make media fire safes, but you're still vulnerable to the situations listed above.

These days I try to have a digital version of every document possible. That's all of our bills, property tax statements, birth/death/wedding certificates, etc. Once it's in digital form, I have a copy on my computer, two backup drives (each in a different location), and the most important documents get burned to a BluRay data disc as another layer of protection.

 

[ShokWaveRider]

We have a very well hidden fireproof safe.

 

[Midpack]

Our (former) bank discontinued safety deposit boxes about 15 years ago, and our new bank doesn't have them. So we bought a fireproof safe, and we've never looked back.

We have backups of everything possible, and valuables are insured. Good enough for me.

 

[Nemo2]

When we moved here a decade or more ago and transferred our account to a local branch, we were offered a no charge box and took it. (Never used, and the key's still around here somewhere.)

In the interim we keep whatever valuables in the top drawer of the.......Oops, never mind

 

[MarieIG]

Yes, it's cheap and easily accessible. DH and DS #3 are also authorized to access. Told DS, if either one of us is terminally ill, go down and empty the box.

That's the one draw-back. Had to do that with DM. DF and I were down at the bank crying. Bank staff - "Did anyone die?" Us - "Not yet."

Wills/ POAs should be easily accessible.

 

[Dash man]

Yes, it's cheap and easily accessible. DH and DS #3 are also authorized to access. Told DS, if either one of us is terminally ill, go down and empty the box.



That's the one draw-back. Had to do that with DM. DF and I were down at the bank crying. Bank staff - "Did anyone die?" Us - "Not yet."



Wills/ POAs should be easily accessible.

Another drawback is where to keep the key? They can easily be lost in a fire, flood, tornado or other catastrophe. In my family, it could just be lost!

 

[5Miler]

DGF and I have maintained a safety deposit box for the past 20 years mainly for my house deed, car titles and other hard to replace documents. I have had to replace marriage/divorce decrees previously due to a robbery and it was a complete pain as it involved multiple states due to many relocations. DGF keeps some articles from her parents that she can't part with as well.

 

[DonBaldwin]

We have a fireproof safe for vital documents and coins.

 

[Splash]

We keep titles, passports, birth certificates, ss cards, etc. in our box. We also keep a Death Letter in there that contains info on what assets we have, where they are located, etc.

We made one of our sons an owner on the box with us so he will be able to access it should we both die.

 

[RobbieB]

As a top tier BofA customer I get free anywhere ATM's and a free safe deposit box.

I've used the free ATM (actually charged and charge credited) but the box is still empty.

 

[O2Bfree]

We got one after two of my mom's safes got broken into. They were in a storage unit, and someone broke into the unit, then into both safes. They bashed into the bottom of the smaller safe and used a sawzall to cut into the side of the large gun safe after trying to get in by sawing through the bolts.

We'd been keeping our important stuff plus some firearms in a big gun safe at home, but moved the most important papers and valuables into a safe deposit box.

Next move is to get a simple motion detector/camera system that sends text alerts to watch over the safe when we're gone for more than a few days. DH is also reducing his firearm collection. It was very unsettling to see how easily someone broke into mom's gun safe.

 

[Splash]

DH's mom passed away in March, 2020. DH and his sister had POA already on file with the bank. However, they could not access their mom's safe deposit box because her bank was closed to all on-site activities due to cov-id19. We tried to make an appointment to have 1 person go in and either access or clean out the contents of the box. Our requests were denied for several months.

 

[Dash man]

DH's mom passed away in March, 2020. DH and his sister had POA already on file with the bank. However, they could not access their mom's safe deposit box because her bank was closed to all on-site activities due to cov-id19. We tried to make an appointment to have 1 person go in and either access or clean out the contents of the box. Our requests were denied for several months.

Our only brink and mortar bank is Bank of America. We considered getting a safe deposit box there. The bank has been closed “temporarily” for a while. I’m glad we didn’t get the box.

 

[EA-Sports]

I’d like to get one but it seems that most bank branches got rid of safe deposit boxes now

 

[Spanky]

We store jewelry, important documents, and encrypted USB drive with instructions to decrypt the content in the safety deposit box. Not sure why bother to encrypt the content at all.

 

[razztazz]

I’d like to get one but it seems that most bank branches got rid of safe deposit boxes now

This is what's making me nervous. Are there other venues or types of businesses that rent that kind of secure space?