Five places to look for unclaimed money

WASHINGTON, D.C. » I was changing purses one day and found money I had forgotten I tucked away for an emergency. You would have thought I hit the lottery.

During a recent online discussion, a reader reminded me of a database where people can find unclaimed funds.

“There are lots of hucksters out there claiming they will find your lost property for a ‘modest’ fee, but don’t listen to them,” the person wrote. “Do this. Go to unclaimed.org.”

Yes, that’s a legit free site run by the nonprofit National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators (NAUPA), which is an affiliate of the National Association of State Treasurers. The databases you’ll be searching are located and maintained by each state.

“My wife just received a check from the state of Florida for money that had been with the state for 20 some years,” the reader said. “She will receive a check from the state of Texas for some money [handed over] to the state some 17 years ago. My wife didn’t know anything about the money. Something her dad had apparently done while she was a minor. I also looked there when my dad died. I found a couple of thousand dollars with the state of Illinois from the 1960s. We moved from Illinois in 1956! This site is well worth a few minutes of computer time.”

I would be doing somersaults if I found that much money.

Soon others chimed in about unclaimed cash they found.

Two sisters found $5,000 left by their father in Florida. What a bounty! “Twenty years later, we got back a deposit we had totally forgotten about for the apartment we rented in grad school,” another person wrote.

One reader searched the database during the online chat and shared this:

“I’d never heard of [the site] and just checked. Looks like I have $55 from my campus job from over 10 years ago. Yay! That’s a good chunk of change!”

Unclaimed property laws ensure that financial institutions, other businesses and government agencies return money owed to consumers. In 2015, more than $3 billion held by state governments was returned to folks, according to NAUPA.

“I found $6.37 through this

The Color Of Money