> why keep such valuable items at home in the first place? if they are replaceable, you can just insure them. If they are not, they are better stored somewhere else, no?
You would think, unfortunately banks have done a great sleight of hand in the US limiting their liability related to safe deposit boxes /and/ safe deposit boxes available to rent are nearly impossible to find. Nearly every bank branch in any major metro will have a waiting list that is years out to get a box.
What's so valuable? Well, basically the same stuff most people keep in a random desk/dresser drawer, but ought to have in a safe: Paperwork mostly, guns, jewelry. It's not like I'm storing anything worth tons and tons of money, but the insurance break on getting everything fully covered when you have that sort of safe is significant, and it's one-time up front expense to ensure you can properly store things like paperwork, guns, and jewelry which is easily worth tens of thousands of dollars anyway.
The only difference between me and every other random joe that buys a gun safe at bass pro/cabela's, is that I know what an /actual/ safe is, and I went about acquiring one rather than the cheap RSC you can bypass with a pry bar and a hammer or a sawzall.
> By having such high valuables at home, aren't you putting your family at risk?
Many people have things at home equally valuable, they just don't bother actually doing anything to protect them. I don't think doing the work to protect them adds any additional risk.
> Also, why talk about these things on the internet? Isn't that painting a target on your back too?
Sure, I suppose so. That's true of so many things. I think it's important to be transparent with information though and then mitigate or hedge any risks that come with it. For instance, in my case, I'm nearly always home, I'm always armed, and my valuables are well protected. If someone were to find out and decide they wanted to rob me, the most likely outcome is they'd be leaving in a body bag, so they're unlikely to think that is a wise idea.
To expand on this, generally if you have an itemized insurance rider for personal property on your homeowner's insurance or renter's insurance, everything is covered, but anything stored offsite such as a storage unit or safe deposit box is only insured to a small percentage (10% or less usually) of the total general unscheduled property coverage and cannot be covered with a scheduled/itemized rider. This combined with the shady way banks treat safe deposit boxes means that ironically in the case of /anything/ short of a flood or fire, you are better off having a safe at home vs a safe deposit box, even for insurables like guns/jewelry/collectibles.
A safe deposit box /might/ be marginally better for backup drives and paperwork simply because it's offsite, but a 3-2-1 (one is none, 2 is one) policy/process is better. This really sucks for paperwork because the government is stupid and usually only the actual original matters (e.g. signed marriage license or birth certificate) and certified copies aren't sufficient.
I HIGHLY recommend anyone who wants to be an actual responsible adult to buy a /real/ safe for their home and stick the things that will utterly destroy their life if they're lost/stolen/destroyed into that safe, and keep a spare key/combo to it with whoever is the executor of their will/estate. Nearly every person in America over the age of 30 has tens of thousands of dollars in valuables worth protecting, they just may not think of it as that. It's something like the deed to your house & the associated title and mortgage paperwork, your car titles, insurance policy information for valuables, your marriage license, your passport & birth certificate or other identifying documents, etc. This stuff is absolutely worth protecting, and the dinky "document safe" for $30 at Walmart isn't going to do jack shit.
EDIT: Edit to add that a real safe doesn't have to be $35k. I bought a huge safe when I did it. If you want a small fire-rated Class B TL-30 safe that weighs in the neighborhood of 500-800 pounds, can hold most things other than rifles/shotguns/long-guns, you can find something decent for less than $5k without much trouble, which is around what it costs for a "nicer" "gun safe" at bass pro anyway.
When you include car titles, something people lose constantly and costs $15 to replace at the DMV... It makes me wonder about all the other things you listed being easy to replace also and you're just trying to explain why you got a safe for paperwork.
My mother guards her social security card and passport like they are the keys to life. She was absolutely shocked that I let a scooter rental shop in Vietnam hold my passport as collateral.
People lose or get robbed of everything important all the time. There's a process for everything. I rather not worry and just live my life and deal with things as they come, not worrying so much.
> People lose or get robbed of everything important all the time. There's a process for everything. I rather not worry and just live my life and deal with things as they come, not worrying so much.
You have a much rosier picture of things than I have. I have had to learn the hard way about some of these things, it sounds like you've been lucky so get to be happy-go-lucky. I hope you continue to have good luck in your life. Car titles are only easy to replace while you retain possession of the vehicle and are the recorded owner in the DMV database.
If someone steals the car + title (which happened to me once when I foolishly did what many people do and left the title in the glove box), they can easily re-register the vehicle to themselves and you have basically no recourse unless you can conclusively prove they forged your signature or fraudulently registered the vehicle. Once the successfully record the title change you are pretty screwed, as the saying goes "possession is 9/10s of the law", and it's sadly pretty true. You'd think reporting a car stolen to the police would block someone re-registering it, but that wasn't the case then. It was over 15 years ago, maybe things are better now as much vehicles are electronically titled, but I'd still recommend not losing it.
Maybe my viewpoint is simply a matter of age. Things are much more electronic now and paperwork is less important because there are electronic records. On the flip side, if the electronic records are wrong, sometimes paperwork is the only thing you have to prove that.
Part of being happy go lucky involves not being totally oblivious. There's a big difference between worrying enough to put your car title inside a $5k safe, and worrying so little you keep it inside the car itself.
> You'd think reporting a car stolen to the police would block someone re-registering it, but that wasn't the case then.
Uh, why would that work? Reporting the car stolen should require proof of ownership to prevent denial of service attacks. Someone cuts you off on the freeway? Report their car stolen.
If you call police and report your car stolen the next day it is stolen - police report will be your argument and you not only will get your car back, also whoever re-registered vehicle will go to jail (also a state Notary who verified forged signature will go to jail as well)
most stolen cars go to spare parts or export to Global South as junk/scrap and you can't do that without DMV re-registration.
if you truly have modern car (like BMW 2017 or newer), then you can just disable and lock it remotely from an app, and geolocate it.
Same in every state I've lived (7 at this point), all it requires is that the title is signed by the owner (or the signature looks like it was signed by the owner). The DMV /might/ care to look at the signature when they accepted it vs when they transferred it, or they might now. No notary or witness required.
In California I've heard that DMV can not, or will not, question a signature. I bought and sold cars to pay my way through college, during prime craiglist years, and had to 'recreate' countless signatures when forms were missing or required or even when I was lied to by sellers. Sounds reasonable I assume, unless we think there's a database of signatures somewhere in a government office DMV has access to, how in the world would they even be able to question a signature?
When you buy a car, there is no requirement to provide the ID of the buyer. I suppose DMV could be detectives about it, and lookup old profiles of people on 20 year old titles and somehow match them to registered owners at that time to find their id profile, but no, this isn't done.
pls give me a state name, from my experience all state will require either in-person presence of an owner (verified by ID) or a notary who verified the signature of title holder for transfer
Idaho includes a tear-off bill of sale with the title. You just take that in to the court house and request a new title. You might even be able to do that through the mail.
I’ve bought two used and one new car in NH and sold two used cars there; none of the bills of sale were notarized. I also brought 3 other used cars from out of state into NH, no notary there either.
Add Texas and New York to the list of states which don't require a notary for a private party vehicle transfer. Between NY, CA, and TX that's like 57M licensed drivers, so quite a few cars.
Speaking of bank safe boxes, when the IMF and the EU forced Greece into capital controls, meaning people could only get $400 a week out of their own accounts, plus money for rent...the safe boxes were also controlled. So you were no longer allowed to be alone with your safe box, an employee had to be present to make sure you're not getting money out of there.
You would think, unfortunately banks have done a great sleight of hand in the US limiting their liability related to safe deposit boxes /and/ safe deposit boxes available to rent are nearly impossible to find. Nearly every bank branch in any major metro will have a waiting list that is years out to get a box.
What's so valuable? Well, basically the same stuff most people keep in a random desk/dresser drawer, but ought to have in a safe: Paperwork mostly, guns, jewelry. It's not like I'm storing anything worth tons and tons of money, but the insurance break on getting everything fully covered when you have that sort of safe is significant, and it's one-time up front expense to ensure you can properly store things like paperwork, guns, and jewelry which is easily worth tens of thousands of dollars anyway.
The only difference between me and every other random joe that buys a gun safe at bass pro/cabela's, is that I know what an /actual/ safe is, and I went about acquiring one rather than the cheap RSC you can bypass with a pry bar and a hammer or a sawzall.
> By having such high valuables at home, aren't you putting your family at risk?
Many people have things at home equally valuable, they just don't bother actually doing anything to protect them. I don't think doing the work to protect them adds any additional risk.
> Also, why talk about these things on the internet? Isn't that painting a target on your back too?
Sure, I suppose so. That's true of so many things. I think it's important to be transparent with information though and then mitigate or hedge any risks that come with it. For instance, in my case, I'm nearly always home, I'm always armed, and my valuables are well protected. If someone were to find out and decide they wanted to rob me, the most likely outcome is they'd be leaving in a body bag, so they're unlikely to think that is a wise idea.