COUNTY FAIR
$6 shuttle ride could pay off at
Blue-ribbon produce, antique cars and funnel cake aren’t the only reasons to go to the Hamilton County Fair. You might come back a little richer.
The Tennessee Department of Treasury will have two booths set up this weekend at the Chester Frost Park fairgrounds — one awarding a TNStars college savings account and the other attempting to match Tennessee residents with their missing money.
MISSING MONEY
You don’t even have to go to the fair to find the money you may have coming. You can do the search yourself online. But experts from the treasury’s Unclaimed Property Division will be at the fair to help if you’d rather let them do it.
Spokeswoman Shelli King says the division has visited fairs and festivals in every corner of the state over the past year hoping to connect Tennesseans with their missing money. This will be a return trip to the Hamilton County Fair.
The division also attended last year’s fair “with tremendous success,” King says in a news release. Tennesseans learned about unclaimed property from the booth as well as through local media coverage, resulting in more than 12,000 total claims filed over the same weekend the previous year, she says.
Statewide, according to treasury stats, the division returned 43,482 claims in fiscal year 2017, resulting in $48 million in missing money that was returned to its rightful owners. That’s the highest number of claims and dollars returned by the program in a single year.
Fairgoers may stop by the Unclaimed Property booth to search www.ClaimIt TN.gov for missing money. If property is found, the owner can file a claim right there, and division representatives can answer any questions about the claim or claim process.
Unclaimed property is money that has been turned over to the state by businesses and organizations who cannot locate the rightful owners. Every year, millions of missing dollars are turned over, and the Tennessee Department of Treasury works to get that money back to whom it belongs. In Tennessee, there is more than $900 million in unclaimed property still waiting to be returned, including more than $43.5 million in Hamilton and surrounding counties, according to King.
There is no time limit in Tennessee to claim unclaimed property. It is held for the rightful owner or their legal beneficiaries until it is claimed.
COLLEGE SAVINGS
The chance to win scholarship funds is a guessing game at the TNStars College Savings 529 Program booth. The person with the closest guess wins a scholarship equal to that amount in a TNStars account.
As part of College Savings Month, the TNStars client service team will be on-site to help local residents learn more about the benefits of saving early for college. Research shows that students with dedicated savings for college are about seven times more likely to attend college than children with no dedicated account.
TNStars is a program of the Tennessee Department of the Treasury that offers high-quality investment options at a low cost to help families save tax-free for future college expenses. Learn more at TNStars.com.
ABOUT THE FAIR
The Hamilton County Fair will take place from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, rain or shine, at Chester Frost Park in Hixson. Fairgoers must park at Northgate Mall or the Middle Valley Recreation Center and ride a bus to the fairgrounds. Admission to the fair is free, but the bus ride costs $6 for adults, $4 for children 3-12. Tickets are sold until 4 p.m. each day.
For more information, visit www.hamiltontn. gov/fair or call the information line at 423-2096893.