I was listening to a podcast that mentioned that getting a safe deposit box in most major banks required, at minimum, getting on a waiting list or probably needing to “know someone”.
Wiki informs me that SDBs are usually institutionally offered things (banks, hotels, etc) And are not FDIC insured.
Assuming this is true, and there is a demand, why aren’t there businesses whose sole purpose is to offer boxes. Do you need a federal license? Could I start one?
I suppose you could open said business.
I would think with a bank (or credit union) that there would be more “safety” if something should happen such as the business closes up. Would different rules apply to financial institutions compared to Safe Boxes R Us for personal/customers property if they file for bankruptcy or otherwise go out of business?
A number of year ago a local bowling alley got shut down by the IRS (or a different government agency) and ALL the assets were seized including the customers bowling balls that were in the lockers. I bowled at a different alley but according to some of the bowlers who bowled there you needed to prove the bowling ball was yours and not the owner of the business. Lots of paper work involving your claim to your property. What if this happened to the safe deposit box business? The government seizes the “assets” including the items in the boxes?
There are such businesses; here is one I know firsthand:
I’d be careful with Safe Deposit Boxes in the time of COVID.
One of the banks in town (that was the latest fish to gobble up that bank branch) has a branch with secure Safe Deposit Boxes. Due to either decreased foot traffic or the need for a “COVID scrub down” that branch has been closed for a month. People in town who have things in their Safe Deposit Boxes in the Vault are Screaming… because they can’t get at them until the Branch opens up again.
If it matters, it’s “Skank of America”.
How is that different from a storage unit? I’m pretty sure if you can run a normal storage facility, then you can run a storage facility where the units are smaller and better protected.
I think it has more to do with cost than anything else. With the safety deposit boxes I’ve rented they have all been inside a bank vault or something like a bank vault. In other words a secure area with very limited access by anyone except a bank employee and someone who can prove they have a SDB.
In contrast, lots of places have PO boxes and it would be easy for someone to go into the back and take anything out of a POB they want. A SDB has to be so secure that I would trust my most valuable possessions will be safe from theft, fire, robbery, etc., and that’s not going to be cheap to build.
I think it would be prohibitively expensive to set something up like a bank, but not be a bank, even if it’s perfectly legal to do so. How much can you charge for a SDB? $20 a month? Where I live most people have gun safes and they work perfectly well as an oversized SDB.
Between the gun safes and the fire safes you can buy at Home Depot and such, ISTM that SDBs are really a 1930s solution to 1930s problems.
Back in the day when people had truly irreplaceable papers and things like bearer bonds were out there, I could see ordinary middle to upper-middle class folks needing bank-level security for some of their stuff.
But there is no important paper I own that isn’t just a copy of a record in a computer someplace. And all of what would have been “negotiable instruments” 50 years ago are now just entries in the computers at Vanguard or whoever. Despite having been born in the pre-computer 1950s I can now apply online to get a duplicate birth certificate from the county where I was born. So what exactly would I put in my SDB were I to have one? Priceless jewels we own but never wear?
FTR, here’s a thread I started a dozen years ago (!) asking about the utility of SDBs. The response was mixed. I see nothing about the social and commercial changes of the last 12 years that make SDBs more essential for ordinary folks. In fact far less.
The documents in my safe deposit box aren’t irreplaceable; they’re documents that would be a nuisance to replace. Sure, I can go online and order a replacement, but that generally involves paying a fee. I had to replace a missing car title about ten years ago, and IIRC it cost $75. Then you have to wait a couple of weeks for the replacement to arrive in the mail. In my experience, when you need one of those documents, you need it now.
For what it’s worth, my box is free—well, not technically free; my bank offers a $25 discount for account holders, and the smallest box is $25 per year.
The New York Times ran an article (paywall warning) a couple of years ago about what happens when the bank loses the stuff in a customer’s safe deposit box, which can happen as bank branches close or banks merge. It confirms some things said upthread, that banks aren’t offering safe deposit boxes much any longer, as they’re a pain, not very profitable, expensive to build and not appealing to many customers any longer. The article also says that there are no federal laws governing the boxes.
To answer the OP’s question, sure, you can offer private safe deposit boxes, independent of a bank. But the question is whether you can make a business of it. My parents have had a box as long as I can remember (as my mother loves jewelry) and it’s been at the same bank branch that their checking account. The safe deposit boxes are in the same vault the bank branch uses to store its cash, so it’s not an additional expense for the bank.
I do a backup of my computer files to a flash drive once a month or so, and put it in my Safe Deposit Box. I make the copy mainly to protect against ransomware, which could infect my routine cloud backup, for that purpose I could just keep it at home; but I also just like having a secondary backup in a separate physical location.
The only significant physical document I have in there is my will. I have a scanned copy of it, which I guess would probably hold up if the original were lost provided the attorney could verify it - but the attorney said he could not (or would not) keep a copy. Is there any way to store a definitive valid will in electronic form?
Fire safes tend to have laughably poor locks. They’re designed to keep a fire from damaging your goods more than anything. I’m not sure the locks on gun safes are all that much better. Plus, unless bolted down, someone can just take the entire safe off the property and deal with opening it’s convenient.
The thing about a safety deposit box is, short of an actual bank robbery, the chances of your items going missing is minuscule. Plus they have the added benefit of people not even knowing where they are. If I want to steal something of yours and I know it’s in safe in your house, it’s going to be a lot easier to get at that knowing it’s in a safety deposit box at some bank somewhere.
While I’m not saying that a fire safe is worthless. If you have something you absolutely can’t have stolen and you want it in a safe in your house, beyond just have a good lock, the safe needs to be either heavy, bolted down (with the door facing a wall) or set into the concrete (preferably under the stairs). I suppose having it well hidden works too.
Furthermore, if you keep very valuable things in your house, someone might find out and target you. You introduce the risk of not being able to get them, of course, but everything is a tradeoff.
Yeah, that a very good point. As are the posts about not being as relevant today because of digital information.
Not a good place for it. In NY at least, a safe deposit box is frozen on the owner’s death because it’s part of the estate and has to be inventoried.
There is an ongoing keffluffle regarding a government seizure of people’s stuff from a private company that offered lock boxes in Beverly Hills.
Apparently there are ne’er-do-wells who hide illegal stuff in such places, and the government cast an overly wide net to get at them. Sounds like an unpleasant experience for box holders.
So is there some accepted valid method of storing a will, or some way to store it electronically now? It seems crazy that my will should depend on the existence of a physical paper document. Where am I supposed to keep this document? If I keep it in my house, a house fire might kill me and burn my will at the same time. Or my evil relative might murder me and destroy the will.
I live in Colorado, and state law here allows access to a deceased person’s safe deposit box to retrieve a will (or see if there’s a will in there). You might want to find out what the law says in your state.
I’ve never had a SDB, but can you simply list a beneficiary? That way all someone has to do is go to the bank with some ID and a death notice and the bank will allow them access to it (either with the key the beneficiary has or drilling it for them).
I’m not much of a ‘what will happen after I die’ type of person, but just about anywhere I’ve been given the option to list a beneficiary, I always put someone. Typically my daughter. Just seems like it’ll be easier for them to clean out my checking/savings/brokerage/retirement accounts when I’m gone.
As part of my parents’ end-of-life planning, they brought my brother and me to the bank and had us added as authorized to access their safe deposit box. Of course, that could backfire as I think we’re both able to access it now whenever we want. But I’m way out of town and I trust my brother. (Plus, to be honest, most of the contents is jewelry that’s of no interest to me, so it’s actually going to be a pain to get rid of it.)
Usually, your lawyer keeps a copy.