Trying to figure out what you should keep in your home safe and what would be better off at the bank deposit box? Here is a quick list for your home safe to get you started!
1. Information you Need for Insurance Purposes
If your home is destroyed or damaged in a fire, flood, or another catastrophic event, you will need to make a homeowner’s insurance claim. But in order to do that, you need documentation, including an inventory of your household possessions. Keeping that information in your home safe. That way that documentation will be kept safe, and you will be able to make a successful claim. Keep your policies in here too.
2. Deeds and Titles
Store the deed to your home and your car titles in your home safe. These are in all likelihood your most valuable possessions after all, and you want to have the legal proof of ownership for both secure.
3. Your Passport and Social Security Cards
Replacing a passport is expensive and it can also be a real pain. Spare yourself that hassle if you can by storing your passport in your safe so you do not lose it. The same goes for your social security cards. You almost never need to actually use these, but you do need to keep them safe.
4. Copies of Wills, Living Wills, Health Care Proxies, and so on.
You do not want to store your originals in here, but copies of your wills and other important legal documents should go in your home safe. You want to keep these documents as accessible and discoverable as possible to ensure that you get the care that you need in a medical crisis, or that your possessions are distributed appropriately if you should die.
5. Safe Deposit Box Keys as well as Spare Keys
If you do have a bank safe deposit box, you need to keep the keys secure, so the home safe is the best place. Your home safe is also a great place to store any spare keys you have to your home, cars, etc.
6. Guns
If you own guns or other weapons that you want to keep secure from children or intruders, then you absolutely need a gun safe. And no, another type of safe will not necessarily cut it. Many fireproof safes are easy to break into, even for kids.
7. Valuables
If you have valuable estate jewelry or other small items which have a substantial monetary value, the home safe is a good place for them. You may also want to store valuables in the home safe that have a high sentimental value and are literally irreplaceable.
8. Cash
There are mixed opinions on whether or not you should store cash in your home safe. In general, cash is something which is safer at the bank safe vault than it is in your home safe. At the same time, there is no denying that your home safe offers fast access when you need it, and there are good reasons to have some emergency cash on hand. So cash is still useful to store in your home safe; just think carefully about the amount you want to keep in there.
9. Investment Paperwork
If you have investments, retirement accounts, and so on, your home safe is the perfect place to store the information. This info could be very helpful in case of an emergency or a death.
10. Data
If you buy a media-rated safe that will provide fire protection for data, you can store an external hard-drive or discs in your safe which contain digital copies of all kinds of information. You can store backup copies of paperwork this way, along with family photos, work files, personal projects, multimedia, and much, much more.
While this is not an exhaustive list of all the useful things you can store in your home safe, it should be enough to get you started! It will take a while to get everything together that you need, but someday if you face an emergency, you will be very glad you did.