Unclaimed Money Guy

Find and Claim Unclaimed Funds Held by States

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Hi this is Mark and I'm "The Unclaimed Money Guy." I thought it might be helpful if I share the story of how and why I launched this website. I started to get interested in the topic of unclaimed money a few years ago when I came across the unclaimed money website in Virginia, which is where I live. I can't recall how I got there, but I did. Turns out, I had some money waiting for me there, roughly $250, which I thought was pretty cool. I also noticed my wife and a bunch of friends and family also had money waiting to be claimed. So I let them know. Needless to say, I earned a lot of brownie points. Probably the biggest high-five I got was from my cousin Jonathan, who lives in Colorado. I noticed that he had money coming to him on the Colorado unclaimed money website. Trouble is, it didn't say how much he was due. All it said was that the amount was "Over $250." Nonetheless, I let him know and he followed up directly with the Colorado unclaimed money division. Turns out, that the amount was much higher than he thought, nearly $30,000, mostly from an unclaimed tax refund. Whoa! Not surprisingly, I'm his favorite cousin now. By the way, don't ask me how he could have possibly misplaced $30,000. Seems like a lot to lose track of. But that's what happened. Ok, needless to say, I'm intrigued by this unclaimed money thing. As a former business reporter for BusinessWeek and USA Today, I'm just a naturally curious guy. So I decided to see what I could learn about this whole area. It took me upwards of a year to peel back layers of this onion, but, over time, I started to understand, step-by-step, how this whole ecosystem worked, and what I learned wasn't always pretty. Let me share with you the big picture: We're talking a lot of money here. States are sitting on more than $100 billion in unclaimed money. No, that's not a typo. The numbers are really that big. States get this money from dormant accounts at banks, insurance companies, brokerage accounts, etc and, technically speaking, they say they are holding that money in "trust" for rightful owners to claim. Yeah, right. In reality, these funds act like slush funds for many states, quietly supporting political campaigns, pensions, or debt repayments. As states face increasing financial stress, these unclaimed money honey pots become critical financial lifelines, which are used for all sorts of purposes, political campaigns, teacher pensions, paying down debt and more. In Delaware, for instance, unclaimed money is the No. 3 source of revenue for the entire state. Yup. You heard that right. All this helps explain why states are not exactly tripping over themselves to get money back into the hands of rightful owners, meaning you. Quite the contrary. In many cases, they actively try not to do that. Return rates to rightful owners are pitifully low, usually less than 5% a year. Sure, some states are better at returning money than others, but, generally speaking, they all would rather keep the money rather than return it, despite what they say in public. Over time, a mini-industry of lawyers, accountants and others has popped up, mostly designed to help states collect unclaimed money, rather than return it. As I peeled back layers of this onion, it became clear to me that the big loser in this equation was you, meaning the consumer. Sure, there are reports on TV, ABC's Good Morning America does a lot of them, as do many local TV stations, showing grandma finding $500 in unclaimed money. Makes for good television, and for good politics. But what became clear to me is that stories like these are kind of a red herring. They distract from what's really going on, namely that states are doing a lot of things, many pretty sketchy, to keep consumers away from their unclaimed money honey pots. Examples include: crappy websites, making it hard for consumers to file for claims and not proactively going out and finding rightful owners, at least not in any meaningful way. When you consider that most states are sitting on hundreds of millions or billions in unclaimed funds, that's a pretty big honey pot we're talking about. In California alone we're talking $15 billion. Again, that's not a typo. In New York, the number is about $20 billion. In Texas, it's about $10 billion. You get the picture. Still, most consumers don't know much about this big pool of unclaimed money out there—and that's no accident, because states don't want to give the money back. So I put on my journalist hat and began investigating this whole unclaimed money ecosystem. I spent time looking at every state's unclaimed money website. And I can tell you, I was not impressed. Some of them were downright awful—hard to navigate, buggy and clearly set up to keep people from finding and claiming their money. I also took a look at which states make it easy to claim your money—and which ones are a lot harder. You can see the results of my work on the state scorecards. I've also used my journalistic eye to look at lots of other questions related to unclaimed money, including the real-world experiences that ordinary people have when they search for and make claims for unclaimed money. My mission here is not to hoard unclaimed money, but to help ordinary people—people like you—make sense of the unclaimed money landscape, and then offer some guidance how how to save, send and grow any money you may find. I hope my reviews of state programs and articles I've written help you make better sense of this esoteric—yet very important—area of wealth management. Good luck to you on your unclaimed money search!