This past weekend didn't really go the way I had planned. @mrsbozz was feeling pretty under the weather, so a lot of the tentative plans we had made earlier in the week kind of went out the window. With her being in bed most the weekend, I took an opportunity to do some cleaning around the house and get some things done that I had been putting off for a while.
One of them just happened to be cleaning off the nightstand on my side of the bed. It's not that had a lot of stuff on there, but as my recent silver purchases came in the mail, I took photos and then set them on the nightstand until I was able to get them in the safe.
My wife and I actually have two safes, one that she had before we were married and one that I had before we were married. We don't honestly have much valuable stuff to keep in them besides some boring documents, but I do tend to squirrel away my silver in one of them.
As I think about it, we really have them for fire protection more than anything. They are both quite small, so if someone broke into the house they could easily walk off with them. In addition to that, if you have ever seen one of those storage shows on TV where people buy old storage units, you know that dropping one "just so" on the corner often makes it pop right open.
It's kind of a scary thought.
Unfortunately, unless you want to install a vault in your house there isn't much other option.
Quite a bit ago I remember getting a letter from one of our local banks or credit unions and I made a note of what it said in my Google Keep so I could write a post about it at a later date. Well, here we are at that later date.
Basically, the letter said that they were no longer going to be offering safety deposit box services at their local branches. Apparently, the demand for deposit boxes has become unsustainable in their opinion.
If you do a quick Google search, you can find countless articles like this one. They talk about how many major banks are starting to offer less of these services due to rising costs and declining interest.
However, there are still a few banks like Wells Fargo that cater to a generally older crowd who still offer things like this.
I think we are all familiar with those old movie scenes where something significant happens in a safety deposit box room. In my opinion there has always been something kind of magical about them. I've actually never been in one myself, but just all the doors and locks and security adds a bit of mystery to it.
I'll be the first to admit, I am a sucker for a good treasure hunt and I can't help but wonder what treasures (or secrets) might be hidden behind those doors.
I'm sure most of us here on HIVE will not be surprised to learn that the majority of young people are preferring to take digital routes to store their valuable items. Documents have never really been an issue, but things like silver would be. However, with the advent of cryptocurrency, we are likely seeing more of a need for secure digital storage solutions. Banks are taking notice of that.
In the article I shared earlier in this post, they specifically point out the fact that some banks are replacing physical storage options with digital ones. Now, that raises even more concerns as we all know how centralized the Internet has become. If these banks are leveraging cloud options versus on prem solutions that require power, hardware, and maintenance, then there are certainly other things to worry about.
I'd be more worried about data theft than a natural disaster because even with a physical safety deposit boxes, natural disasters are always a concern.
In any event, it's an interesting subject that I had never really considered before until I got that letter in the mail.
What do you think? Should safety deposit boxes stay around? Have you ever used one or do you currently pay for one? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
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Hmm... I really should buy a safe for my coins for protecting in the case of fire. I have to admit, I've jumped on the digital train for documents. The only important physical documents I have are my and my kids SSN cards, their birth certificates, and our Japanese my number cards (Japan's version of SSN). All other documents I have scanned and keep on an external drive and encrypted on iCloud.
That seems to be the way things are moving lately. My parents have a safe that is a bit more substantial, but I still think it wouldn't be hard to get into if you really wanted to.
I guess I don't own much of the valuable stuff that could be put into a safety deposit box :) So no, never owned a safe or used a deposit service at the bank...
I was just saying I am pretty much the same way.
I think safe deposit boxes are a great thing for banks to offer, but executives view them as more space they could use for something else I'm sure. I've used many safe deposit boxes over the years and still have a couple open to keep documents I don't want to have laying around the house.
Safes are great too, just make sure you can bolt them down. It makes it harder to walk off with it that way. In one office I had a floor safe built into the concrete in the floor. That was really nice because it was covered by flooring and unless you knew what to move and how you wouldn't have known it was there! They are expensive to install after your place is built though!
Digital stuff has more risks in my eyes, because of hacking, large solar flares, electromagnetic pulse, and good old fashioned losing your your password. In today's world nothing is truly safe, sadly...
Yeah, it is interesting how things have shifted. That is a good point about the floor safe, but definitely something you need to plan ahead for. Ultimately, I don't feel like anything I have is that important, but who knows!
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I feel there is some novelty to safety boxes.
So in most wills instead of an address and a location of the safety box key they'll leave a long string of random alphanumeric characters for the predecessor to see what was left him?
Rough...
Yeah, I don't know. I have my trust documents stored in a secure online storage since it is in .pdf form anyway.