Comment by Loughla
18 days ago
We did that with major hail damage a few years ago. I learned that in a disaster, you should count on everything being junk, and you're lucky if you can salvage anything. We also learned the value of itemized lists.
1500/piece for 20 junk windows I was building a greenhouse with that I dug out of the trash the year before. $250 for a bird feeder because they couldn't find one outside of specialty stores. $40k instead of 10k for a new roof on the shed because it was heavier gauge metal than standard.
Exact replacements can be expensive, but you need to make sure your insurance has 100% replacement instead of adjusted for age or like-kind replacements.
After that experience, we itemized EVERYTHING in the house with make, model, serial number, and color. It was a bitch to get set up, but took the value of our home contents from around 75k to over 250k for exact replacements.
Copies of these records along with our master password for our keepass database are in two bank deposit boxes about 45 minutes apart. For $50/year we can sleep easy.
How do you open the bank vault? Key? Passcode?
We have keys. In the event those are lost or destroyed, they will provide access to an approved list of individuals and drill the lock for $40.
Also they're small town banks, so that makes it easier as well. We don't really need to worry about providing ID, but if we did and couldn't access ID or something like that, we have four other people listed with access, one of which lives hours away in case of a disaster impacting everyone else on the list. They don't have keys but could get into it for us. So for a few hundred dollars, we're set and insured for the declared value of the contents of the boxes (250k max for another $15/year) if the banks are both destroyed as well!
Bank vault can be key+combination (eg three letters) or dual key or others. For example in a dual key: one key from the bank and one key being your own key.
If a key is lost, you go and prove your identity (easier if any bank employee is familiar with you) and ask for a new key. A date is set and a locksmith shall come, you are next to him and next to the bank employee while he uses the bank's key and lockpicks your lock. Then he configures it for a new key (or replace the lock).
It's cost you something like $300 or whatever.
Source: been next to locksmith opening a bank vault, twice, in two different countries. Once for a bank belonging to a deceased family member (we had the key but not the three-letters combination) and once not because I lost my key but because the bank's lock (on my vault) went defective.
So it's not "my key from the my vault at the bank melted during a housefire, so I can never access my vault at the bank anymore" nor is it "I forgot my three-letters combination, so until the end of the universe that bank vault shall stay locked".
In general, identity (the bank checking who you are) is often involved in regular unlocking and there will be an identity-only recovery procedure that will work even if you lose your usual credential (key, passcode, card, whatever). This may involve drilling a lock and the bill for that.
If you can prove your identity to the bank and have lost your key, they will drill the lock to get you into your box. For a fee, of course.