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Comment by rietta | Hacker News Reader

Have to plan ahead and have the keypass password in an envelope in the safe deposit box.

Yes. I do this. I have all my financial account numbers and passwords written on a piece of paper stored in my safe deposit box. If anything happens to me (knocks wood), my family will still be ok.

What else is in your self deposit box? I thought only rich people with gold and jewels and spies with fake passports and ready currency used safe deposit boxes.

When we first immigrated to Canada my family kept some of our documents such as birth records etc. It was super cheap and my family felt security was beneficial.

I don't have one currently but perhaps I should.

Most people in here are rich.

I'm middle class. We have a safe deposit box where I keep stuff that would be a pain in my ass to replace in the event of a fire/flood/etc.

Said items are titles to my vehicles and home, my marriage license, the will of a family member I've been entrusted with, birth certificates for my self and family members, and a couple of keepsakes for the kids that I'm very long on. It only costs me about $80 per year, and it brings me a lot of peace of mind. I have photocopies of all those docs at home, because you rarely need the real thing.

A local bank near us provides a free one as long as you keep $100 min balance. So ends up being very cheap offsite backup to store important documents, a backup hard drive of most precious data, etc.

They are really handy for storing backup hard drives too. Short of having your own armed guards and razor wire it is good physical security for free or cheap.

Something to be aware of regarding safe deposit boxes: possession of the key does not automatically grant access to the box.

The bank I use maintains a list of people I allow to access my box along with their physical signature. When I needed to access my box, I had to sign in with a pen, on paper and show my ID. They compared that signature with the one I gave when I first obtained the box. I was granted access if they matched. If someone else came in with the key but their name wasn't on the bank's list or the signature didn't match, they wouldn't allow access to the box.

So make sure people you want to be able to access the box are on that list (which means they will have to go to the bank to provide a signature ahead of time.)

To add to this: if someone is not on that access list but is instead listed in a will, my understanding is that the will has to go through probate before access to the box is granted. It's quite likely that people would want/need access to passwords before that.

It depends on the scenario. Which is why planning eventualities is so important. If I suddenly die, then my wife has knowledge and signatures on file necessary to keep going. Also a three ring binder book to look up since that is not the time to be making decisions. If both my wife and I die together, and our minor kids are the ones remaining than immediate password access is a good deal less important compared to the keeps being fed and housed and things being worked out. Of course the will will come into impact, guardianship, life insurance, social security survivors benefits, when they will live, where they will go to school. Winding down this business I have and other matters would be secondary.

I am not saying we do this right. I certain have to "sharpen the pencil right" but the point is this should not be an afterthought.

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