Where do you keep your important documents?

Sea_Shell

I was thinking more of the identity theft that could stem from holding the originals of ALL your official paperwork, if handily kept in one (portable) place!!  😲

As with most things, risk vs reward decisions come into it.   Easily accessable (for you) can be equally accessible to others, both friend or foe 😉

DullGreyGuy

Sea_Shell said:

Things like your House Deeds (if you hold them)
Passports
Counterpart driving licences
V5s
Wills / POAs
Birth/Marriage Certificates
Insurance policy schedules/certificates

Basically, the things that are replaceable, but which would be a PITA to replace if lost/destroyed.


Do you have folders, in a filing cabinet?   Labelled Car/House/Personal?
Scanned copies saved and backed up?
A fireproof filing tin?
A home safe?
A bank safety deposit box?
Or are they "somewhere safe" in the house, if you can just remember where you put them? 

Should you even keep these all in one place?   Grab and go, if you had to evacuate, for example, but potentially a burglars dream.


We currently do the filing cabinet, plus (some) scanned copies, but should we go further?  It locks, but they are hardly Fort Knox. 

Passports, driving license - bedside table
V5c, Wills, Certificates - filing cabinet 
Insurance - email, can't remember the last time I asked for paper copies

Most of the above also have digital copies stored in DropBox

Having been burgled multiple times over the years none of the above were ever stolen (ignoring the time a briefcase was stolen and passport happened to be in there but they didnt take g/friends who's was in bedside draw so they were after the bag with a laptop in it not the passport).

With these things it's balancing convenience -v- safety. In practice getting copies of most things would just be a pain and a bit of expense hence having them on hand relative to how often they're used. Some of the Mrs non-UK paperwork would be harder to get duplicates and so we did consider upgrading our safe (for jewellery) to a fireproof one but never hit the top of the to do list. 

400ixl

Mix of measures depending on what it is.

Basic principle is that if you don't have 3 copies in 3 locations then you don't have a backup.

Documents (e.g. Pension / bank / pay statements, insurance, invoices etc), which are reference only and digital copy will suffice  are scanned and stored on local media and cloud storage (2 cloud services)

Documents which are needed in the future as original (Passports, wills, birth certificates, V5 etc) are scanned and stored as above with originals in a safe  + may have a physical copy off site with family in their safe (and we have copies of theirs)

The local digital copy is encrypted and not obvious to where and how it is connected. Online version may have additional security above the 2FA to access it with personal encryption on top of cloud providers or stored within a secure vault.

Once scanned if the original does not need to go into the safe then it is shredded.

Very little around the house that could be used for identity theft. Only the small pile waiting to be batch scanned (anything vulnerable will be done same day or near enough).

Other thing in the safe is a high security thumb drive (3 factor authentication) with details of master password for password manager, bank account & investment accounts)

Pat38493

It may not be burglary that is a huge risk to the documents - however it could be fire or flood.

Also probably a niche issue, but I had an incident where a relative’s ex partner who was still temporarily in their previous shared home, burned some very important documents on purpose as a kind of revenge.

Sea_Shell

I Agree that fire is the main concern for us rather than theft, or flood (as our "study" is upstairs and we live on a hill)

I think I might investigate a fireproof filing box.   Where to keep the box? 😉🤔

Any recommendations?

Ganga

Sea_Shell said:

I Agree that fire is the main concern for us rather than theft, or flood (as our "study" is upstairs and we live on a hill)

I think I might investigate a fireproof filing box.   Where to keep the box? 😉🤔

Any recommendations?

In the fireproof safe   

Sea_Shell

Ganga said:

Sea_Shell said:

I Agree that fire is the main concern for us rather than theft, or flood (as our "study" is upstairs and we live on a hill)

I think I might investigate a fireproof filing box.   Where to keep the box? 😉🤔

Any recommendations?

In the fireproof safe   

Ah, the "Russian Doll" approach 😉

MattMattMattUK

In a fire and waterproof safe which is well enough hidden that I doubt anyone would think to look where it is or even find it if they were looking. It is also tethered to a smoke grenade, so if someone did find it and pull it out they would find themselves in a room completely full of smoke in a few seconds and so be very unlikely to make it out the door with the fire safe. 

That is only physical documents though, passport, birth certificate, a few other bits, nearly everything else is digital and stored encrypted in a few different locations (both online and physical backups at multiple locations).

westv

Do some on here work for MI5? 

DullGreyGuy

I'm a little confused... the original question, in abridged form, was where do you keep your birth certificate to avoid needing to go through the pain of buying a new one.


The answer to this in general appears to be "I go through the pain of buying 2 other copies now and keep the 3 in different locations"


That feels very much like cutting off your nose to spite your face. In 40 years of life haven't yet managed to lose/damage it once and yet people are suggesting going through the pain of getting duplicates of everything to avoid the pain of getting duplicates.  Seems more like you are inflicting on yourself exactly what the OP was trying to avoid?