If you want to keep something safe in the event of a bank failure, you don't put it in a bank. I trust something like a will with a close relative.

I have had security box in a bank building that has seen 3 banks over the years. I’ve never had a problem. I keep papers and documents that I don’t want to lose in there. The only problem I see with them is bank buildings will go away as how we do our finances continues to change and that will be the end of security boxes.

all the will and trust papers should be with your executors, or beneficiaries. . .
yes you should have a copy, but digital ones on an air gapped solid state thumb drive. .
as well as financial statements, account numbers, and passwords. .

and the executors / beneficiaries all have a thumb drive copy. .
where they store it, someplace safe. . and the only issue would be a fire. .
but with you and they having a copy, the probabilities of two fires at the same time in each place is pretty remote

good luck to us!

We have always had a safety deposit box. If you have various people such as, in-home nursing care, repairmen, painters, carpet cleaners, etc. in and out of your house as we have, it make us feel more secure. Plus bank bldgs might be built stronger than our flimsy house in case of tornados, hurricane force winds. I worry about everything. 😊

Get a safe for your house and keep your stuff there. You can buy a good quality safe that's relatively fireproof for hours.

All of this is kinda funny. We've stored necessary paperwork in a bank safe deposit for over 50 years and everything is still intact with ready access. Our estate executor has a key, as do we and we're set to go. If anyone wants the copy of our will and cherished, only pictures of Aunt Fanny, Uncle Chester and Grandma and Grandpa Acorn they are welcome to them. We won't be looking at them much longer anyway.

I am POA for a brother, and he has a safe deposit box in a big national bank. The bank employee spent ten minutes trying to open it with the keys, my brother’s and the bank’s. It had not been opened in so many years that corrosion or rust has frozen the lock. Good luck to any safe cracker.
About three quarters of the boxes in the vault were open and unused.
I have a fireproof wall safe at home. I am sure any determined thief could crack it, but I consider that to be an unlikely event. I know of only one burglary in The Villages, and in that instance only dresser drawers were emptied, as it appeared the ransacking was brief and unskilled.

All of our important documents are digitally copied and stored on a computer and in two different cloud accounts, and the successor trustee has access to each.

Exactly right. I posted that (post 15) in response to the guy that says why bother having a safe at home (post 14).

We didn't want to waste time digitally copying anything or managing cloud accounts, we just dropped the papers in the SDB while at the bank.

The unused boxes are probably because the younger generations now don't have the wealth to worry about important papers or valuables being compromised.

When I was looking for a safe deposit box closer to home at my banking center,
I was told that some of their newer branches don't
offer SDB because there's not much profit for the space they take up.

I've used a safe deposit box for decades. As others have said, it's safer than anything you could have at home and the only way into it is with the simultaneous use of the bank master key and the owner's key. Otherwise, the lock has to be drilled out. I use it to store some original documents and valuables. All my documents have digital copies on my computer which also contains an inventory of the SDB contents. I have digitized almost everything and in the event of a fire the destruction of my computer and local backups would be devastating. I don't trust cloud storage of backups of my computers. This year alone I have received about a half dozen notices of my personal data being hacked at various major companies. I keep in the SDB redundant portable hard drives which have drive images of computers. The SDB drives are updated 2-3 times a year in-between which I have local backups. It's not a perfect system but it works for me.