Is a safe deposit box a good place for your gold?
When you buy gold, you also need to think about how to store it. For example, you can hide it in many places in the house. For those who find these options too insecure, there is also the possibility of storing gold in a safe deposit box. But is this really so sensible?
Contents
- These are the advantages of a safe deposit box
- Is your safe deposit box sufficiently insured?
- Several safe deposit boxes can be useful
- No money without proof
- A safe deposit box is not anonymous
- A safe deposit box can be problematic in times of emergency
- Alternative: The bank-independent safekeeping
These are the advantages of the safe deposit box
A key advantage of the safe deposit box is that you don't have to worry about storing your gold. After all, it is safely stored in the safe deposit box and you do not have to search for good hiding places for your gold treasures at home. This way you do not run the risk of your gold being stolen at home, e.g. in the course of a burglary. In addition, the costs for a safe deposit box are manageable: For a two-digit annual rent, you can use a safe deposit box to store your valuables and other personal items (e.g. important documents such as a will) that you do not want to keep at home. Of course, the same applies to lockers: The bigger, the more expensive. Accordingly, you should compare the costs that you will incur if you want to rent a safe deposit box from several providers. If you decide to store your gold in a safe deposit box, you usually don't have to travel far, because many regional banks also offer you the option of renting a safe deposit box.
Is your safe deposit box sufficiently insured?
Storing gold in a safe deposit box does not mean that it is absolutely safe. Again and again there are cases of burglaries in banks where safe deposit boxes are robbed. There is a great risk especially when banks do not invest enough in their security measures.
To ensure that the financial hassle is not too great if the worst comes to the worst, you should make sure in advance that your safe deposit box has adequate insurance cover. With some banks, insurance is already included in the annual rent for the safe deposit box, but with others it is not. In this case, you will need to take out separate insurance for your safe deposit box. You must also make sure that you choose a sufficiently high sum insured. For example, if you store gold worth 10,000 euros in your safe deposit box, but your insurance only covers 5,000 euros, you will be stuck with half of the damage. However, you must also bear in mind that the value of the gold stored in your safe deposit box will increase considerably over the years due to price developments. Accordingly, you should always know the current value of your gold treasures as well as the sum insured. Even if insurance is already included with your safe deposit box, you should consider these points.
If you rent a safe deposit box, you do not necessarily have to take out your own insurance for it. This is because it is often the case that insurance coverage for a safe deposit box is also included in your household insurance policy. If this is the case, you should check whether the sum insured for your gold in the safe deposit box is sufficient or whether you need to adjust it.
You should also always remember that it is not always possible to subsequently increase the sum insured. This can be a problem not only in the case of price increases, but also if you keep buying gold and accordingly the value of your gold holdings gradually increases. To avoid these problems, you should choose a significantly higher sum insured in advance, in order to then remain flexible. It also makes sense to keep checking the value of your gold treasures and see if they are still covered by your sum insured.
Insuring gold properly - The optimal insurance for your home, safe deposit box or vault
Especially those who buy precious metals anonymously would like to store them at home. Why this can be problematic in terms of insurance, we explain in this eBook. There you will also learn how to solve the problems associated with this.
Multiple safe deposit boxes can make sense
When storing gold in a safe deposit box, it's also important to remember that there may be a maximum limit to which your gold is insurable for this purpose. If you exceed this limit, you should spread your treasures over several safe deposit boxes. For example, if you have gold worth 1 million euros, but the safe deposit box only insures up to 100,000 euros, you should spread your treasures over ten different safe deposit boxes.
No money without proof
Even if you have an appropriate insurance policy with a sufficiently high sum insured for your safe deposit box, it is still possible that you will be left sitting on the damage if the worst comes to the worst. This happens if you have no proof of what valuables you have stored in the safe deposit box and you can accordingly not prove what you have lost. Therefore, you should be able to show precise documentation of what is in your safe deposit box. An invoice is usually not sufficient for this. After all, the purchase of an item alone does not prove that you actually own it, let alone that you have stored it in a safe deposit box. For this reason, you should still photograph the stored items. To ensure that the valuables were actually in your possession at the time they were stored in the safe deposit box, the photo should also have a clearly identifiable date, e.g. by means of a clock on which the details can be read very accurately.
It makes sense to keep a record of how much gold you store in the safe deposit box. You should keep this documentation in a sealed envelope.
A safe deposit box is not anonymous
A major reason investors buy gold is the ability to do so anonymously. If you store your gold in a safe deposit box, this anonymity is eroded. For example, you usually have to pay for the safe deposit box by direct debit, which means that bank transactions can be used to draw conclusions about the fact that you own a safe deposit box and thus also correspondingly valuable items. In addition, the banks usually document the access to the safe deposit box.
Guide to the anonymous gold purchase free of charge as eBook
Who would like to buy gold not online, but anonymously on site against cash payment, should consider these valuable tips to be optimally prepared for a so-called blackboard transaction. You will receive the guidebook free of charge as a PDF file if you sign up for our newsletter.
A safe deposit box can be problematic in times of need
When you store your gold in a safe deposit box, you can't access it at any time. Instead, you are bound to opening hours of the bank or even have to make an appointment for it. Especially in the case of a crisis, this disadvantage can quickly have a serious impact: You will probably not be the only one who wants to have access to his safe deposit box and have to expect corresponding waiting times. It is very bad if national holiday are imposed and you have no possibility to see the inside of your bank for several days or even weeks. After all, you bought gold precisely for crisis situations. It therefore makes more sense to store your gold in other storage facilities.
Alternative: The bank-independent safekeeping
If you would like to store your gold in a safe deposit box, but the disadvantages of a bank safe deposit box are too great for you, you can also use a non-bank safe deposit box. Since cash payment is often possible with these, you can store precious metals and other valuables there completely anonymously. This is also possible because providers of bank-independent safe deposit boxes are not obliged to pass on their customers' data to the tax office. In addition, non-bank safe deposit boxes offer other advantages over bank safe deposit boxes. For example, some providers offer locker tenants the option of accessing their locker around the clock. This means you are not dependent on bank opening hours.
However, non-bank lockers have the disadvantage that they are not covered by household insurance, although the security standards there are usually higher than for bank lockers.
In addition, there is also the option for bank-independent individual safekeeping.
No VAT for gold, silver, platinum and palladium: Combine purchase with secure storage
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