How well are you securing your cash and valuables? Do you have a safe at home? A safe is an obvious choice for convenience, but unless you have serious security, you wouldn’t want to leave major wealth sitting unattended while you’re at the office or on vacation. You need a better option.
The most obvious choice for most is a safe deposit box. That is the route an increasing number of the world’s wealthiest are taking. Disasters like the wildfires and hurricanes that have hit the United States in recent years have made securing wealth an urgent endeavor in the minds of many. Benjamin Stupples writes at Bloomberg Quint:
Safe-deposit boxes can range from a few centimeters in height to the size of a kitchen cabinet. Another option are free ports — warehouses in tax-free zones such as Singapore, Geneva and Delaware favored for storing art, but which typically limit the amount of time that pieces can be held.
There are more than 25 million safe-deposit boxes by some estimates in the U.S. alone. They can be used for the mundane to the exotic. A private collector held the Crown of the Andes, made with 5.3 pounds of gold and more than 400 emeralds, in a Citibank box before its sale four years ago to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Still, for many banks, they’re no longer a core offering.
The amount of space they require is one deterrent. That’s especially the case in London, home to the world’s largest population of wealthy individuals, according to real estate broker Knight Frank. In the city center, few places have secure storage facilities as large as IBV’s on Park Lane, where customers can also purchase gold coins from across the globe.
In the U.S., safe-deposit boxes also have largely fallen out of favor as banks close branches and opt not to install them in new ones. Demand has waned in recent years, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp., the nation’s two largest lenders.
“Much of the decline can be attributed to clients opting to store documents online, especially younger clients,” said Bank of America spokesman Don Vecchiarello.
But there’s revived interest as fears of weather disasters and wildfires have prompted more people to secure their valuables, said Jerry Pluard, founder of Safe Deposit Box Insurance Coverage.
You need to take the safety of your wealth seriously. Whether it’s in the form of gold or bitcoin, or cash or art, you should secure it properly.
Originally posted on November 26, 2019.
