Safe Luxury

Personal safes for the home - which do you prefer?

I'm looking to purchase a small personal security safe for my home. I'd like to spend $80.00 or less, but I am willing to go as high as $100.00 (we young adults are on strict budgets. lol). I would like something small, basically just large enough to hold an envelope of money, my passport, and some jewelry. Fire-proof is important as well. I'd prefer one with a combination or digital lock. - Which brand of safe do you recommend? - Do you prefer a desk drawer safe, or a small one that can be tucked away elsewhere? - What other key things do I need to be looking for before I make my purchase? [[ I've posted this question elsewhere, my apologies, but I'm finding it hard to recieve any answers! Thanks for any input you may provide!]]

Public Comments

1. you're lookin' @ spending at least $149.00 Here's what I found: http://www.nextag.com/fireproof-lock-box/search-html oh Amazon has this document safe for $30.00 http://www.nextag.com/Honeywell-298-Cubic-Inch-573517572/prices-html
2. If they take battaries or not.. Mine is both.. and make sure you get one large enough to put everything in.. I got mine at canadian tire.. for under 100.00.. check out your areas online classified ads for a used one..
3. One of the things we discovered during the firestorms that we had through San Diego is that a fireproof safe to 1500 degrees was not enough because those fires burned way hotter and melted some of the safes. We chose one that had a key entry, is portable and not too heavy to grab in an emergency evacuation. We didn't choose the digital models or the combination ones. We're too forgetful to remember a combination and the last one we had that was digital required batteries and was useless in a flood. You can find them very inexpensively at WalMart and they are under 100 dollars (I think the last one we got was around $75). It is deep enough to hold jewelry and watches as well as wide enough to hold manila envelopes. The locking mechanism on ours is rust proof (kinda important because we did have a flood several years ago).
4. In your price range, a Sentry brand safe is good. A $100 safe is not much challenge to a determined burglar, but Sentry does well in fire tests (again- for the money). You can greatly increase the security by bolting the safe to the floor in a spot where a thief would have trouble getting a pry bar under it. Don't waste money on any small safe if you are not going to bolt it to the floor- the thieves can just carry it home and break it at their leisure. Skip a digital lock in a low-priced safe. They are easily defeated by prying off the keypad and spiking with a battery. I am a locksmith who has opened dozens of cheap digital safes this way. The bad guys can figure it out, too. The standard combination lock on a Sentry safe is well designed, and hard to "manipulate" without the combination. Sentry also makes a floor safe that can be installed in a concrete floor- These are easy to hide, and more fire resistant than an ordinary box safe. It takes some work to install it, but I think they are worth the effort. I have seen them for sale ay Home Depot in the past. I once saw an installation where a guy bolted a galvanized garbage can to his garage floor, put a floor safe in the garbage can and filled the can with concrete. When the lid was on it just looked like a garbage can, and NO ONE is going to carry that home!