The $11,200 Junk Mail Letter

D. almost threw it away. It came in one of those envelopes designed to look urgent — the kind with a fake window, bold red text on the outside, the word IMPORTANT printed three times in different fonts. She got it while clearing out the last of her grandmother’s forwarded mail. Her grandmother had been dead for six years.

She almost didn’t open it.

Inside: a letter from a credit union she’d never heard of, in a state nobody in the family had lived in for twenty years, addressed to her grandmother. A dormant savings account. Last accessed December 2004. Current balance: $11,200.

Eleven thousand dollars. Sitting in an account for over twenty years. Not lost. Not stolen. Just waiting — because nobody knew to look for it.

Over $50 billion in unclaimed property is currently sitting in state databases. Most of it belongs to people who are still alive.

Here’s the part most people don’t know: every U.S. state maintains a public database of unclaimed property. Bank accounts, insurance payouts, security deposits, forgotten utility refunds. Money that was owed to someone, went uncollected, and eventually got transferred to the state to hold — indefinitely — until someone claims it.

The database is free. The search takes about four minutes. You can look up your own name, your parents’ names, anyone who ever lived at your address.

ONE THING TO DO TODAY

Go to missingmoney.com — it searches multiple states at once. Type in your name. Then your parents’ names. Then your grandparents’ if you know them.

It costs nothing. It takes four minutes. And there’s a non-trivial chance you find something.

D. spent three months on the claim process. She received the $11,200. Then she searched a few more names. She found two more accounts.

— Martin, Cincinnati OH