Life can move pretty fast, and it is not out of the question that you might forget to collect money that is owed to you. You might not know that you were the beneficiary of a life insurance policy, or you might have left funds in an old retirement account that you had forgotten about. It is not unusual for people to be owed money from various official sources, and finding that money is actually very simple.
How Can There Be Unclaimed Funds?
Most people do not realize how easy it is to have unclaimed funds attached to their names. If you surrender your car’s license plates to take the car off the road, you are usually entitled to a refund for the remaining portion of your car registration fee. If you overpay on a utility bill, then that money must be refunded to you when you close that account. These are just some examples of how you could have unclaimed funds to your name, and it never hurts to try and recover those funds.
USA.gov
The first place to start your search for lost funds is USA.gov. This is a free government website that contains a list of resources you can use to track down owed funds. This is a helpful website, but it is rarely updated and many of the links do not work. There are also some links that take you to websites that try to sell you products or ask you to download files and those links should be avoided. But the links that go to websites from organizations such as the IRS and the Veteran’s Administration can help you to locate funds that are owed to you.
Internet Search
Most of the funds that are unclaimed are held by state governments, and there are not many state websites on USA.gov. If you do an Internet search on claiming lost funds in your state, you will get a list of websites to try out. To get the best results, you should only use websites offered by your state government. There are many websites created to steal information from people looking for unclaimed funds, but you can avoid those sites if you use the government options.
Be Careful When Using Websites For Unclaimed Money
You should only use websites run by government entities when looking for unclaimed funds. If those websites ask for more than your name, then check the address bar to make sure the website is secure. A secure website starts with https:// instead of the standard http://. On rare occasions, you may be asked to give your social security number to find unclaimed funds. If you are uncomfortable with giving that information, then do not give it online. The website you are using should have a phone number you can call to give that information to a government researcher.
There are millions of dollars in unclaimed funds out there and some of those funds could be yours. By doing a simple search, you can check to see if you might be able to line your wallet with extra cash that you did not even know you had coming.
Jim Treebold is a North Carolina based writer. He lives by the mantra of “Learn 1 new thing each day”! Jim loves to write, read, pedal around on his electric bike and dream of big things. Drop him a line if you like his writing, he loves hearing from his readers!