Surviving the Nor'Easters and Hurricanes (snow, house)
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... Yet anyone that reads my stuff also knows I'm a proponent of storing valuables in safety deposit boxes in a bank.
When banks decide to lock their doors and refuse access to your savings accounts, they also refuse you access to your 'safe deposit boxes'. Both sets of my grandparents lost an awful lot when the banks closed.
When banks decide to lock their doors and refuse access to your savings accounts, they also refuse you access to your 'safe deposit boxes'. Both sets of my grandparents lost an awful lot when the banks closed.
You beat me to it. I am not a fan of bank deposit boxes. Got my own safe in my living room, thank you very much. All 1000# of it.
When banks decide to lock their doors and refuse access to your savings accounts, they also refuse you access to your 'safe deposit boxes'. Both sets of my grandparents lost an awful lot when the banks closed.
And mine lost a lot paying out out depositors...that was personal liability back in the day and he was a lot more skilled in farming than he was buying out undercapitalized banks....
Still, the buildings exist and so do the safety deposit boxes. There were bank holidays, but they reopened. The bank runs can't affect that. Essentially a strike on the banks now would have to be so severe that the country has essentially fallen into an anarchy, and anarchies end. You just need to wait it out.
It's also helpful in some cases to have multiple banks. The one where the main wealth is a rich immigrant bank. I don't need to know whose cash filled boxes they are, merely I just need to know they exist because those belong to someone. No matter what happens...someone's watching that bank because in the bank is a vault with two feet of steel surrounding it.
I've never understood the giant imposing vault in the house. It attracts the attention of nosy hired help. It's certainly ominous to me but not to someone skilled in this stuff...if so, just watch a locksmith go to work on one...and let's face it. Robber enters...puts a gun to my kid's head and says open it....what am I gonna do? You can have whatever's here. Between the sure thing of what's on premises...does the robber really want to go hostage and make me go to the bank....most can't hold their cool. Plus it gives me contact with the outside world.
Beyond keeping your person safe, in any non SHTF scenario it's best to just let a robber do their thing. Even if they take your wife's jewels...as long as you have insurance on them...that's why you have insurance.
Insurance companies are the best lawmen around. Now, I wouldn't try and fool them. These guys can afford to get the smart ones. They can make contracts for the recovery of assets with people that will go and get those assets. Government can't do that. Remember the Somolia pirate thing? The US had a problem when it went and freed boats from the pirates. They had to arrest the pirates. Those pirates just hit the lottery....they were going to America to serve their sentences, and guess how many wanted to go back to Somalia when their sentence was complete? The insurance companies....they may be unaware of how it's done, but they have teams they can contract with to go recover stolen assets such as boats as well. Highly effective teams. Enjoy the sausage, don't ask how it was made. At any rate...somehow that practice got scarce.
Conclusion is don't let conspiracy thoughts get you on this. They're introduced by anyone else selling something. Insured assets stored in bank deposit boxes is the best combination you could hope for. Not your mattress. Not your walls. Not your suit linings. Not your crawl space. Not a safe that's going to stick out like a sore thumb on a drive by metals scan. Your home security should be about yourselves and keeping you safe....assume the rest is not secure, not secret and you just want to be less easy than those around you to be afflicted by the dangers you want to protect against.
If you're worried about personally frozen assets, the banks are admittedly less reliable than they once were. Then you need an accountant, and you need big money for anyone to care. You've got no help to skirt around some divorce thing...so don't try. Pay your childcare. Yeah, medical's taking your personally held assets at old age.
Trust me, the Feds already know whatever it is that you do. It's merely a matter of whether you do something shady that gives them right to search seizure....and information sharing within the government. The NSA may know what type of porn you like along with every other thing any company has ever collected about you...but until an agency has a proven need for that information, it stays there.
Be prepared, but don't be shady in your prepping. If I can send any other message, let it be that. There are people making money from illegal activities that cannot use the legal systems. Don't do things that might get you confused with them. They aren't fooling anyone. There's nothing the government wants more than for some drug kingpin who has to personally store a whole bunch of liquid cash in a third world country. Like the Somali pirates....these guys just have a crappy retirement plan, you know? Why risk an American life when you can just tell some OG where another OG stores their money?
Governments do seize or limit safe deposit boxes under certain circumstances, For example, when a joint tenant of a box dies, it's necessary to have an official present when the box is opened. This often causes inconvenience. It's the reason we are told to clean out a joint safe deposit box immediately upon the death of a spouse before the bank learns of the death and puts a hold on the account.
However, neither bank failures nor the infamous "bank holiday" stopped people from using their boxes. The safe deposit boxes have nothing to do with bank deposits. They're simply a service that most banks provide. There are better ways to handle it for most people, however.
Do have a safe deposit box. Not having one may create suspicion.
Governments do seize or limit safe deposit boxes under certain circumstances, For example, when a joint tenant of a box dies, it's necessary to have an official present when the box is opened. This often causes inconvenience. It's the reason we are told to clean out a joint safe deposit box immediately upon the death of a spouse before the bank learns of the death and puts a hold on the account.
However, neither bank failures nor the infamous "bank holiday" stopped people from using their boxes. The safe deposit boxes have nothing to do with bank deposits. They're simply a service that most banks provide. There are better ways to handle it for most people, however.
Do have a safe deposit box. Not having one may create suspicion.
I've been feeling wordy today, but yes. I quite unsuccinctly was saying that my great-grandad's bank, at great expense to our family, honored all of the bank deposits at a bank he'd purchased in the 20's, but the safety deposit boxes were unaffected.
To prepare your family against an untimely death, put the safety deposit box in an entity, not held individually. Entities don't die unexpectedly. Meet with an estate planner though. Take some time and figure out what you want to go to whom, and then setup a plan for it to happen. Safety deposit boxes can have special instructions made to work with your plan.
It's why I don't understand the uproar over the estate tax. It's really a not-prepared tax. If you have enough money to be affected....and love your family/friends even a little....that needs to be planned for so we don't have an estate circus like the late Prince's where you have thousands of people looking to cash in on something terrible. The estate tax is the easiest to get around once people learn they don't need to write MINE on everything.
Governments do seize or limit safe deposit boxes under certain circumstances, For example, when a joint tenant of a box dies, it's necessary to have an official present when the box is opened. This often causes inconvenience. It's the reason we are told to clean out a joint safe deposit box immediately upon the death of a spouse before the bank learns of the death and puts a hold on the account.
However, neither bank failures nor the infamous "bank holiday" stopped people from using their boxes. The safe deposit boxes have nothing to do with bank deposits. They're simply a service that most banks provide. There are better ways to handle it for most people, however.
Do have a safe deposit box. Not having one may create suspicion.
NO. BTDT. I was able to access before and after with no problem at all.
These days, one of the best purposes of a SDB is offsite storage of backup digital data in a place that cannot be hacked or tapped. I always kept copies of the source code to the commercial software I wrote backed-up in one. Safe from fire or theft or tornadoes or hurricanes or EMPs, with no worry about some online storage provider having problems.
... Still, the buildings exist and so do the safety deposit boxes. There were bank holidays, but they reopened. The bank runs can't affect that. Essentially a strike on the banks now would have to be so severe that the country has essentially fallen into an anarchy, and anarchies end. You just need to wait it out.
I have no idea how long the bank closures lasted.
Logically it was not a 1 or 2-day affair but had to have lasted for years. As the banks gradually began foreclosing on homes and hired the sheriff to evict residents.
If a person was capable of just 'waiting it out', eventually you would once again have access to your SFB. Even if you never regained access to your savings account. The problem was dealing with life in the intervening years without access to any bank account or banking services.
Logically it was not a 1 or 2-day affair but had to have lasted for years. As the banks gradually began foreclosing on homes and hired the sheriff to evict residents.
If a person was capable of just 'waiting it out', eventually you would once again have access to your SFB. Even if you never regained access to your savings account. The problem was dealing with life in the intervening years without access to any bank account or banking services.
This was the longest. It lasted a little over a month if you were in the worst hit part of Michigan and was prior to the establishment of FDIC insurance. Shortly thereafter gold was outlawed to move gold currency back into the banking system.
Now dollars are no longer convertible into gold, and most US commerce is electronic, so there's really no reason to close a bank. While I was one of the people cashing out my account in Wamu shortly before it closed, had I stayed it would have transferred fairly seamlessly to Bank of America....who arguably was in worse shape at the time.
Cash for natural disasters makes sense though, but only enough until order is restored or enough to leave an affected area.
But beyond that piece...any other I needed diesel but had petrol or half my alternative MRE's need water added and I don't have storage for that?
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