Do You Have Unclaimed Money?

An article in the State Paper on finding if you have some unclaimed money somewhere was interesting.  I ran my name through and all my family members, it found much money, but none of it was exactly ours.  It was similar names, and in states where I doubt our family has any unclaimed money.  But it showed me there is a lot of money out there.  It would pay you to look, including checking all your parents, living and deceased. 

Here is a tiny excerpt from one of the stories:

 http://www.stltoday.com/business/track-down-your-share-of-unclaimed-billionsarticle_579aa569-5d5a-5c29-8441-54c884cb0710.html



State treasuries alone are safeguarding 117 million instances of unclaimed money, worth about $33 billion, according to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators, or NAUPA. Here's what you need to know and where you should go to search for your unclaimed cash:

• Missingmoney.com is a combined database of many unclaimed property lists in the United States.

• NAUPA provides links to state unclaimed-property websites at unclaimed.org. Some state sites include lost property not listed on Missingmoney.com. More important, some big states, such as California, New York and Illinois, are not on Missingmoney.com. Check any state in which you might be owed money, said John Gabriel, president of NAUPA.

Savings bonds: Search treasuryhunt.gov for U.S. savings bonds and marketable securities, such as Treasury bills, notes and bonds. For example, you can search for matured E and EE savings bonds issued after 1974 that are no longer earning interest. And you can search for interest payments you might be entitled to from H or HH savings bonds, said Treasury spokeswoman Joyce Harris. You will have to provide a Social Security number or employer identification number to search. The site also has downloadable forms for claiming lost, stolen or destroyed bonds.

Pensions: The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. has a "missing participants" service at http://search.pbgc.gov. There, you can determine whether you are owed benefits from a corporate pension plan that was closed or taken over by the PBGC. You also can track down benefits if you are a survivor of a person who should be drawing the pension. This refers to the older type of defined-benefit pensions, not 401(k)-type plans.

• Failed banks: If you have reason to believe that you or a relative has unclaimed money from a bank failure during the end of the savings-and-loan crisis 20 years ago, check the database at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. at http://www2.fdic.gov/funds/. It covers deposits from Jan. 1, 1989, to June 28, 1993.