With headlines reporting the country's banking industry absorbing billions of government bailout dollars almost every week, people may feel the urge to hoard their cash more and more. One strong indication of this trend is the recent spike in sales of home safes. While keeping heaps of money around the house remains an ill-advised practice, a home safe can still be a good way to guard against fires, floods and burglaries. Treasured old photos, important legal contracts, and passports can be difficult to replace.

Knowing what threats you want to guard against is the key to buying the right safe, according to a featured Associated Press article. Like most things you buy, safes come in a variety of shapes and sizes, according to an experienced San Diego locksmith we spoke with recently. He says the lightweight plastic ones you find in department stores are not well-suited for protecting your belongings and probably better for just organizing. To guard against burglaries, you'll want a heftier safe that can't be carted away easily. These might be the size of a microwave or even a mini refrigerator. Depending on your needs, safes can be significantly larger and weigh upward of 300 pounds. Generally, a heavier safe indicates it's made with more steel and will be harder to break into with average household tools.

No matter how heavy the safe is, it's important to bolt it to the floor; cheaper safes that don't have the bolt-down feature should be avoided. The exception is if you're looking to protect the contents from fires, rather than burglaries. In that case a security box that's about the size of the metal cashier boxes you might see at a bake sale or flea market may be better instead of a safe. In San Diego cities like Temecula locksmiths generally advise to not assume all safes protect against fire and water damage. Those are features that should be spelled out on the packaging.

To guard against fires, it is recommend to look for safes tested by Underwriter Laboratories Inc. For those living in the San Diego, Los Angeles or other regions prone to wildfires might want the "UL 2-Hour" seal of approval, which indicates the safe can endure intense fires for up to two hours. If your chief concern is house fires, the UL 1-Hour label might suffice.

Still, there's no way to predict how long a house fire will last. Murrieta locksmith specialists who have over 20 years experience point out that the duration of a house fire depends on several factors, including the size of the structure and intensity of the blaze.

Safes with dial combinations usually come with a set code, which can be reset by a locksmith. You can set your own code, usually three to six digits, with electronic push button safes. Both options are equally secure; if you forget your combination, you or your locksmith can call the safe manufacturer with the safe's serial number to get the code or a reset code. In the event that damage was done to your safe and you are in need of safe repair San Diego residents may be required to submit a notarized request to ensure the company that they're not giving out the code to a burglar when requesting the reset code.

Even if you purchase a home safe, you might want to store certain valuables, such as family heirlooms, in a bank vault. The average safe deposit box at a bank costs between $25 and $125 a year, said Dave McGuinn, president of Safe Deposit Specialists, a Houston-based financial consulting firm. The contents of safe deposit boxes aren't insured by the bank or FDIC. To protect against fires, floods, natural disasters or robberies, you might want to add a rider to your homeowner's policy or get a separate policy altogether for the contents. Since your access will be limited to bank hours, consider keeping certain items at home in a safe. "Passports if you travel regularly, medical papers you might need on a Sunday," McGuinn said. "Anything you use regularly or at a moment's notice."