We have one. We’ve got some family jewelry, some documents such as car title / marriage certificate, some savings bonds, some stock certificates, some other memorabilia. When I remember, I put the silver flatware there also - I use that perhaps twice a year, no need to have it at the house. It’s maybe 90 bucks a year; we get a 50% discount because we have an account there. It’s actually the only reason we maintain that account; it’s the closest bank that has boxes (our credit union does not).
Oddly, we do NOT have copies of our will there though we should put copies there.
I’ve had one since I was about 18. It holds important documents and some valuables. I’d never store my passport there though… I use it way too frequently (at least once a week) and don’t like having it out of my possession at all.
I have multiple safe deposit boxes – all free due to minimum deposits. I keep valuable or irreplaceable stuff that I don’t need access to all the time. Stuff like rare coins, jewelry, stock certificates, property deeds, legal papers, baseball cards (yes, some nice ones there), and some memorabilia. I used to keep my passport there, but it’s too inconvenient to go get it every time I need it, so that stays home now.
I have one rented safe-deposit box (at a private safe-deposit center, rather than a bank) in which I keep my gold. Never had one before I began investing in bullion.
When I was a kid my parents used theirs a lot for documents and, I dunno, stuff. They still have it but I think it’s empty. Almost none of your papers are irreplacable in case of fire (well, somebody up thread has adoption papers from another country - good example) and a deposit box isn’t really a good idea for “in case of death” stuff unless somebody knows about it and knows they’re authorized to go into it and knows that’s where everything is.
My folks have one in which they keep important documents–birth certificates, military discharge papers, passports, property documents, etc.
Because I live a more, ahem, transient life (such is the life of a university student), I don’t have a safe deposit box, but I do have a fireproof lockbox hidden in my apartment, where I keep things like my passport and work and study permits and whatnot. Not that these things are irreplaceable, but it would be a major inconvenience if I lost my passport and had to spend my time down at the embassy proving my identity and getting my papers reissued.
My mother has one (it’s free with her checking account, but she pays a slight fee to have the next size up). Right now it has a bit of her mother’s jewelry and some old coins. There are some papers in there too (stock certificates and such, I think). I recently got an external hard drive for backup purposes; I like the idea of using the safe deposit box for off-site storage.
Ideally, you should have two external hard drives, one at home and one in the safe deposit box. Do regular (perhaps nightly incremental) backups at home and then regularly (weekly? monthly?) swap with the one in the vault.
I have one. We keep certain rarely used important papers there:
– car and house titles
– birth and marriage certificates
and similar.
Also, my wife has a very few pieces of very expensive jewelry that she rarely wears. (In fact, I think she only wore them at our wedding – they were gifts from her parents.) We keep those in the safe deposit box as well.
I am 29 and had one when we lived in Atlanta. I used it for important, difficult to replace documents. At the time I was here on a visa, and the thought of trying to recover from losing all my immigration related documents (visa applications, passport, birth certificate, etc) was quite horrible.
We have one, and we also have a fireproof home safe in the basement. For reasons expressed above, I don’t trust the safe for everything, so really important items go in the SDB, and semi-important things go in the safe. We keep one of two SDB keys in the safe, and one of two safe keys in the SDB. The other SDB key is at my office, and the other safe key is in the desk at home. We also keep computer backups in the SDB.
A few years ago I gave my parents a little ‘to do list’ (location of documents and applicable keys) in the event of my wife’s and my simultaneous and untimely demise as a result of the house burning down, or something. Point is, my family could get to the important papers if we go.
Absolutely critical? Hell no. But for around $75 a year, it provides us with peace of mind.
I’ve considered getting a box, which would be free, and not too inconvenient since the bank is 2 blocks away. I wouldn’t need to store valuables like jewelry however. It occurred to me that since I have a detached garage, a fireproof box should be enough. Since there is 30 feet between the two structures, it should be offsite enough.
I have ethernet run to the garage and plan on putting a NAS out there for backup. I doubt the garage and the house would burn at the same time unless say, a plane fell on it.
Something else that should be worth putting in a safety deposit box is photos. In 50 years optical media will probably be a thing of the distant past and photos can be lost through mismanagement of data and mishaps unrelated to hardware failure. A printed photo is timeless, so once a year maybe, you should print your favorite digital shots and store them somewhere safe. Also scan your pre-digital prints and stash them too.
I have a tiny one. Right now it has my original birth certificate, passport, stock certificate for my co-op (think house title). And…I guess that’s it, actually.
Costs a whopping $45 per year, and saves me from having to come up with some kind of secure place in the tiny slob-hovel I call an apartment.
We have one, which holds old passports and our current ones when we’re not using them, the deed to the house, car titles, and my father-in-laws will. The old jewelry is the pearls we got from my rich aunt.
We have a copy of our wills in the house, but there is a copy on file at our lawyers.
My distrust of fireproof safes is more that anything that is light enough to want to move is also light enough to steal. The safety deposit box is not very expensive and safe.
As for backups, my wife uses an over the net backup service. I think it is cheaper than a box big enough for a disk, and it gets updated every night, not once in a few months. I do have a set of photos of our furniture and stuff on a CD stored at work.
We have one. It costs us 20 dollars a year. We keep the deed to the house and everything pertaining, the surveys and such. Also I think the car titles, although some of those have migrated back to the house. The savings bonds my mom gave the kids through the years, and a couple little pieces of jewelry, like wedding rings from the first time around for each of us. (And what the heck should we do with those?)
I need to go through some things and get them in there, and after the trip we’re taking in the fall, the passports might land in there, too. It just makes me feel a bit safer about the important things.
I have one. At various times, it’s held jewellry, foreign currency (I used to do a lot of travelling, and it was a handy place to put currency that I’d be needing the next time I went to _____, which I’d be doing in a month or two, so no point in paying to change it into local currency so I could pay to change it again later), and various negotiable papers. Given that I’ve been the victim of a break-in before, it only seems prudent to have one. It’s not that expensive.
Aslo in the US, “if you use the box to store taxable income-producing stocks, bonds, or investment-related papers and documents. You cannot deduct the rent if you use the box only for jewelry, other personal items, or tax-exempt securities.”
But I think it goes under the heading of miscellaneous deductions, and therefore subject to the 2% (or whatever) of AGI. So if you earn 50,000 a year, those deductions have to total up more than 1000 dollars.
Almost none of your papers are irreplacable in case of fire (well, somebody up thread has adoption papers from another country - good example) and a deposit box isn’t really a good idea for “in case of death” stuff unless somebody knows about it and knows they’re authorized to go into it and knows that’s where everything is.