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Keeping track of your belongings can be stressful. You’ll have to consider many factors such as where to place them or how you can always keep them secure. You should also think about how much you are willing to spend for their protection.
While you can certainly hide your valuable possessions somewhere else, that’s not entirely a good idea. There are better storage options out there, and two of the best we recommend are a safe box storage and a bank safety deposit box.
But which is better among them? Let’s find out.
Safe box storage overview
A safe box storage is a great way to store your precious items. It gives you the option of choosing a concealed location for a private vault in your home.
In general, everything of value can be kept in a safe box storage for protection. However, it is important to note that other irreplaceable goods should be taken to the bank.
Social Security cards, insurance policies, passports, and documents like power of attorney are all items that you’d want to keep in a safe box storage. Since banks aren’t open 24 hours a day, a nice home safe is a better place to store all of these important documents.
The problem is that burglars may easily break into your home and threaten you to unlock the safe. This is why many experts highly recommend hiding your safe box storage inside a wall or floor to ensure the safety of your stored possessions.
Why go for safe box storage?
A safe box storage has a ton of advantages such as the fact that it’s always locked, easily accessible 24/7, and can’t be carried away by a thief when mounted to the floor. It’s also a one-time investment.
However, it does have its drawbacks. For example, a box with a poor fire rating won’t safeguard contents in the event of a fire. Since most home safes are simply water-resistant rather than waterproof, putting out a fire can sometimes cause damage to the contents.
The contents are also not legally protected after the owner’s death. Additionally, if the house is destroyed by a natural disaster, the safe is likely to be severely damaged.
Bank safety deposit box overview
A bank safety deposit box is a lockable container, usually constructed of metal, in which valuables are kept in a bank. This type of storage is normally housed in vaults and can be rented for an annual charge throughout a customer’s lifetime.
Deposit boxes have been around since the 19th century. Some banks consider safety deposit boxes as an outdated service and have discontinued supplying them. However, there is still a market for them.
These boxes are extremely secure in terms of access. Each box has two keys: one stays with your bank while you keep the other one. You can’t access your deposit box without providing identification documents to the bank. It is also important to note that no one can access your box without your permission.
Some examples of items you can store in a bank safety deposit box are as follows:
- Birth certificates
- Car titles
- Property and title deeds
- Other important documents
Other items you should consider for the box include family heirlooms, precious metals like gold and silver, valuable collections, diamond investments, pictures or videos of your home’s contents for insurance purposes, irreplaceable photos, and jewellery storage.
What’s the importance of a safety deposit box?
A safety deposit box provides you with storage security at a reasonable cost. While it’s natural to want to keep valuables and critical documents close, locking them away in a cabinet or desk isn’t a good idea as that will expose them to theft and increase the danger of loss due to flood, fire, or carelessness.
Combination safes and lockboxes are a better choice, but they still lack the privacy and security of a safety deposit box kept in your local bank’s private vault. The main advantage of a safety deposit box is that you can count on the bank’s cutting-edge security technologies.
One problem with safety deposit boxes, however, is that if you misplace your key or it gets stolen, no one will know who it belongs to.
What to know about bank and private safety storage
You want to keep in mind that a safety deposit box is not the same as a bank account. Since it’s bank-provided storage, the contents of the box are not covered by insurance in the event they are damaged or stolen.
Safety deposit boxes are rarely insured by banking institutions. If you want your valuables in your safety deposit box or private safe to be insured, talk to your insurance agent about getting coverage for them.
No security storage is totally safe from loss or destruction. It is advisable that you don’t keep identifying information near your deposit box to limit the chances of theft. Such information as your box number and the bank’s name should be inaccessible to outsiders.
The bank can only get to your box if there is a court order. They can also open the box if you don’t pay the rent that is due for using the bank. In such a case, whatever you have kept in the box can be taken by the bank.
However, in the event of an owner’s death, the bank seals the box. It remains sealed until the bank receives court papers from the owner’s estate.
Which is better: safe box storage or bank safety deposit boxes?
Both a safe box storage and a bank safety deposit box are great storage options. However, it is obvious that whatever precious things you want to store are more secure at the bank than in your home.
For one, it is easier for your home to get robbed than it is for banks since they have advanced security systems. However, this is not to say that items at a bank’s deposit box are 100% safe. Gangsters can pull a bank robbery or a natural disaster could take a bank down. However, these are quite unlikely events.
It is true that we live in a digital age. Virtually everything that matters appears to be kept in the cloud, making physical safe deposit boxes a thing of the past. However, don’t overlook the value of a private safe deposit when it comes to document storage and keeping other treasures safe.
