Safe Buying Guide

Home or Office Safe Buying Guide

Things to consider before buying a home safe or an office safe?

Buying a safe needs to be done right the first time, and it requires some thinking, planning, looking around and decision making. We are trying to make the process easier for you before you leave the comfort of your home to search for the best deal available. Some of the decisions to make before you buy are:

1. Should the safe be fireproof, or does the content stored in the safe not need to be protected from fire?
2. How big or small should the safe be?
3. What kind of safe is needed?
4. The dimensions, the height, the width and depth of the safe and see if it fits in the designated space for it.
5. The price of the safe.

We get questions from our customers regarding our fire and theft safes, some of these questions are:

• What kind of safe should I buy (What is the best safe for me)?
• Where to Buy a Safe (Local vs. Online)?
• What should I use a safe for (what to store in my safe)?

NOTE: This is just a guide you can use when buying a safe, it is not a word of God, use it if it helps and ignore it if you think it does not.

We will try to answer these questions to the best of our knowledge as we think it is beneficial for our customers to determine which safe is right for them.

• Where do you want to use the safe? Is it a home safe or an office safe? Usually home safes are for personal use, while office or business safe is used to store business records/data which can grow over the years. So the size of the safe is determined by where the safe is used and what will be stored in the safe.
  • Tip: for office safe select a safe larger than what you have to store, you will have more to store next year and the year after..
• What kind of safe to buy - Baying a safe guide?
• Do you need a fire proof safe to protect valuables from fire?  In this case you need to select a fire proof safe, there are safes that can withstand fire for 1 or 2 hours, the choice is yours.
• If the safe is only used to protect valuables from theft then you do not need a fire proof safe, but it is highly recommended since it is only a few more dollars. Tip: Select a burglary safe that can be bolted to the ground for added security.
• Drop safes are great for giving access to everyone to deposit cash and documents but they are not fire proof.
• If you are planning on using your safe for data or media then a media safe or as they are sometimes called data safe is the best way to go, they provide fire proof, moisture and water proof.
• Do you want to hide your safe behind a picture? So a wall safe is the way to go, just keep in mind that not all wall safes are fire proof safes, most wall safes fit between the standard studs in your home or office wall, before shopping for a wall safe find out the distance between the studs in your wall to minimize the installation time and expenses.
• Tip: Selecting the location to install a wall safe before buying one is very important, some wall safes are deeper than the wall thickness and it will stick out from the other side of the wall, having a closet or a storage room on the other side of the wall is a perfect way to hide the back of the safe while the front is hidden behind a picture.
• For large safes and extra large safes see our selection
• Gun safes: For hand gun safes you need to consider a few things like: do you keep the gun in the house? Do you carry it in your car? If you keep in the house and you want the children to be safe around it then you have quite a few safes that you can choose from, basically any home safe will do.

• Now that you know what kind and size of safe you need, the obvious question is where to buy a safe?

a. Local stores ? if you have the time to drive around town and compare prices, then do it, but just be careful, some store markups are very high, after all they have to pay large utility bills and employees, and guess who will pay for that? you. Also pushy salesman might make a safe look like the right safe for you when it is not, just to make a sale and commission, add to all that local tax.
 

b. Online Stores ? Convenient, no pushy salesmen, no large overhead and the markup is usually a lot lower than your locale stores, be careful of shipping charges, some stores have excessive shipping, some do not charge tax.

This was a guide lines to help you select your safe, whether you are looking for a fire proof safe, drop safe, wall safe, media safe, depository safe or data safe, you can use the same method to determine which safe is best for you.

Other question also been asked is, what should I store in my safe?

Many customers ask us about what they should keep in a safe. Below you will find some suggested records and recommended lengths of time to keep those records. When in doubt, please consult your accountant or financial adviser.