Missing Money

For those of you who have not heard of unclaimed property, let me share a little secret the government doesn't really advertise to the public. Just about every State in the US has what is called an unclaimed property program for things like:

• Bank accounts and safe deposit box contents
• Stocks, mutual funds, bonds, and dividends
• Uncashed checks and wages
• Insurance policies, CD's, trust funds
• Utility deposits, escrow accounts

Say you forget about an account, you move, change jobs, or how about a relative sets up an account on your behalf? Well when the account is deemed inactive that money ends up (usually) at that States unclaimed property office after about a year and it sits there for various amounts of time depending on the state. For example a family member of mine left a job and they still owed them over $600 from payroll and was unable to reach them, after a year the money automatically goes to the unclaimed property office and he was able to file a claim and receive a check in the mail for the missing money.

Which brings me to the topic of Missing Money, there's actually a website called just that http://www.missingmoney.com/ which is a database linked to participating websites in the US, and Canadia which allows people to search unclaimed property programs for your missing money!

Each State website can be located here with the following link http://www.missingmoney.com/Main/StateSites.cfm

There are also some helpful links for places to search for other unclaimed stuff http://www.unclaimed.org/other/

Good luck!