Is having a home safe a good idea?

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There’re two main reasons for fire safes, the first is to protect your important documents from fire, the second is to protect those same documents as well as any small, expensive items, like jewelry, from thieves.

Fire safes are all rated as to how long they’ll protect any paper from fire. As long as you (or the fire department) can extinguish a fire before exceeding that rating, then any fire safe will do a great job of fulfilling that requirement.

As to thieves, well, here almost all home fire safes are nearly useless, unless the owner puts some effort into using them safely. To start with, most people keep their safe loose in the master closet. Guess where every thief’s going to look? If the safe isn’t bolted to the ground, they’ll just grab it and go, taking their time later to see what’s inside. Even if it is bolted to the ground, cracking a basic fire safe won’t take too long, and can be done fairly easily. If you want to keep a fire safe safe from thieves, you need to fasten it extremely securely to the ground, and put it in a very inconspicuous place.