Who uses a safe deposit box?

steve-in-kville

steve-in-kville

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Dec 25, 2001
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And what do you keep in it? My wife and I were going over some of the stuff in our floor safe. We have one of those Sentry safes, its fire resistant but I need the room for other stuff. We have birth certs, SS cards, car titles, house deeds, etc. I was thinking of keeping copies of all that on file, but putting the originals in a safe deposit box. There's a few valuables that I ant access to at home that can not be kept at the bank.

Also, does anyone have any idea what is allowed in a box and whats not? I can see that firearms would be prohibited, but what about a knife collection?

Thanks!!

steve
 
Firearms or knives ? Well how would they know without searching what you put in it ? It's just a matter of getting a box big enough for what you put in it.
 
Bank officials can not open your box without a warrant and even that has to specify what they are looking for.

Fairly safe from prying eyes, but big brother has their ways.

James
 
The bank doesn't care what you use it for, as long as it isn't a dead fish. I know some Bladeforums members keep knives in safe deposit boxes.
 

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I don't keep knives in my safe deposit box (but only because I don't have any that valuable).

Mostly important papers, like birth certs, passports, etc. I also do keep flash drives in the box, mostly digital pictures, in case my pc really bites the big one. Another thing I intend to do is get some photo negatives and store them in the box.

The biggest thing I've heard/read from people who's homes have been destroyed by fire (and I do know a couple personally) was that everything is replacable, except for photos (and people/pets of course). So that's why I store digital photos and negatives off site.

I thought of doing a safe at home, but I really like the idea of my stuff being off site and in a secured area. Distributed risk is my motto.
 
Iteresting what Cougar said about "as long as it isn't a dead fish"
Many many years ago whe I started a banking career, one of the stories told was about a bank customer who got really upset with something the bank did or wouldn't do. Allegedly,the individual rented a safety deposit box, locked a dead fish in the box and went on an extended trip overseas....
As previously said it takes alot to open a box without the renter there...something about almost unlimited liability..... I guess it got pretty ripe smelling in that vault....
 
Yes, it does take a lot legally to open a box without the holder's permission... especially when the holder is dead! Then, the box is sealed and it takes a court order to get in. And if your life insurance policy and such is in there, that could complicate things. So, if you go with a bank deposit box, make sure that your spouse is co-tenant of the box such that if one of you dies, the other will have full access to the box. Work with the bank on this because the exact wording matters. If you're not married, then make sure that one of your heirs is a co-tenent with you.

Also, make sure that your heirs know that you have the box and what bank it's at. Most banks do not put their name on their box keys. Finding a key in your late grandpa's desk drawer will create a huge problem. And if the key isn't found and nobody knows that grandpa had a box, that's when you get into, "I was certain that grandpa has great-grand-dad's WWI medals. But they weren't anywhere in his things. He must have sold them on eBay or something. I sure wish I had them." And so does grandpa. He was so careful with those medals to keep them for you that he put 'em in a safe deposit box. And that's how they got lost.
 
Safe deposit boxes are a good idea. I burn a file backup of my home computer files using a CDROM each month and store it in a safe deposit box somewhere else.

Home burglaries and house fires are too common to keep all the important items at home.

You can write off the cost of renting a safe deposit box on your income tax return under certain conditions and I've done so.
 
For those of you using safe deposit boxes to do computer backups, there are plenty of online services--free even. Xdrive apparently gives you 5 gigs free, and when I got my 4 gig flash drive, not only was that useful for backups, but there was free incremental online backup for the drive also.

My own setup is this: I have two cron jobs, one does a full backup of everything on my comp to an external drive twice a week, the other zips up all my documents and copies them over to my school account every night.

Nothing wrong with using a safe deposit for that, of course... it just strikes me as inconvenient. (And, of course, if you only do it once a week, you can still wind up losing six days worth of stuff.)
 
Dunhausen said:
For those of you using safe deposit boxes to do computer backups, there are plenty of online services--free even. Xdrive apparently gives you 5 gigs free, and when I got my 4 gig flash drive, not only was that useful for backups, but there was free incremental online backup for the drive also.

My own setup is this: I have two cron jobs, one does a full backup of everything on my comp to an external drive twice a week, the other zips up all my documents and copies them over to my school account every night.

Nothing wrong with using a safe deposit for that, of course... it just strikes me as inconvenient. (And, of course, if you only do it once a week, you can still wind up losing six days worth of stuff.)
Click to expand...

Try as you might; you just can't fit legal documents on a flash drive; nor durable goods. ;)
 
Thanks for all the great replies. I'm gonna check into some prices. I had a safe deposit box years ago when I lived at home. I remember the bank officer stayed in the vault and watched from a distance as I loaded the box up. It was just a baseball card collection and such, but still made me a little nervous.

steve
 
steve-in-kville said:
Thanks for all the great replies. I'm gonna check into some prices. I had a safe deposit box years ago when I lived at home. I remember the bank officer stayed in the vault and watched from a distance as I loaded the box up. It was just a baseball card collection and such, but still made me a little nervous.

steve
Click to expand...

At my bank they lead you into a private room to load/unload your box. I then have to call someone to let me back into the safe to lock up the box. Feels very much like the scene in the "Bourne Indentity" except no large amounts of cash or passports in my box. :-(

Also no German accents are spoken by my bank officials, nor is there a cool hand print scanner. :-(
 
Dunhausen said:
For those of you using safe deposit boxes to do computer backups, there are plenty of online services--free even. ...
Click to expand...

Thanks, but I find the notion of sending copies of all my files to an online service unappealing for several reasons including security and privacy.
 
I have one. I am working on getting burned DVD backups of all our baby pics, vids etc into it. Currently it has photocopies of our ids, CCs, bank acct info, investment accts, insurance papers etc..... I think it does buy some peace of mind in that regard...
 
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