The Bottom Line: Six ways to find lost money now!

Are you tight on funds, or just looking to wrap up loose financial ends? For U.S. residents there are some quick places to check to see if any money is due your way: (please note that I've included several international links at the bottom of this post.)

1) Does HUD owe you a refund?

If you had an FHA-insured mortgage, you may be eligible for a refund from HUD/FHA. Check for yourself at http://www.hud.gov/offices/hsg/comp/refunds/index.cfm

2) Did you forget about a bank or other cash account somewhere?

You can check for FDIC-insured unclaimed funds at http://www2.fdic.gov/funds/index.asp.

Check for bank accounts you may have simply forgotten about (like the $141 I just claimed a few months ago, left in a checking account I opened in high school at a place where we only lived a year) at the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators' website, http://www.unclaimed.org/.

Also check the ACS Unclaimed Property Clearinghouse's database at http://www.missingmoney.com/. It collects data for 39 states (versus every state that can be found individually in the links above). But it may turn up search results for states you didn't even think about, like the life insurance cash-value (which I just found through this link) that my parents bought for me when I was age 5.

Check for savings bonds you may have received or purchased, over the years, at the U.S. Treasury's "Treasury Hunt" site, https://www.treasurydirect.gov/TH/BPDLogin?application=thpublic&page=thpublic. Have they been lost, destroyed or stolen? Here's the link to get a replacement: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NC/FoRMSHome?FormType=SBF&site=indiv.

While you're at the TreasuryDirect.gov site, you might want to check to see how much the savings bonds you have on hand are worth (and whether they've stopped earning interest). Here's the link for that:  http://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/research/securities/res_securities_stoppedearninginterest.htm.

3) Did someone in your family pass anything along to you that you don't know about? 

Check for passed-on pensions at the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.'s website, https://search.pbgc.gov/mp/mp.aspx. This agency is holding average unclaimed benefits of nearly $5,000 for 32,000 people owed money from terminated defined benefit pension plans.

Checked for passed-on land at the non-profit National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators's website, http://www.unclaimed.org/mainframe.asp?VisitorType=owner. Click on each state on the map that appears on this page to get the contact information for the respective Department of State Lands Unclaimed Property Divisions; many have searchable online databases. [This is a more complicated search, as it doesn't break out land from other unclaimed property... I'd recommend doing this search last if you're on a quick hunt.]

 4) Are you missing a tax refund?

Check for the status of your current refund or stimulus check at the IRS website: Where's my Refund? or Where's my Stimulus Payment? 

You have up to five years to claim refunds from previous years. For example, an estimated 1.9 million taxpayers left more than $2.5 billion in refunds they did not file for in 1999. Some of these people may have had taxes withheld from their wages but had too little income to require filing a tax return. Others may not have had any tax withheld but would be eligible for the refundable Earned Income Tax Credit. Call the IRS help line at 1-800-829-1040 to find out if there's any money due to you.

5) Does a credit union owe you back your shareholder fee?

Check the list of accountholders due a refund, maintained by the National Credit Union Administration, at http://www.ncua.gov/AssetMgmtCent/unclaimed/UnclaimedDeposits.pdf.

6) Additionally, there is a Department of the Interior set up to renumerate American Indians. Some are eligible for Individual Indian Money (IMM) Accounts. There also are foreign claims awards that have been granted to various groups of people affected by tragedy or government taking of their property. If you are your family are German immigrants, check for names here: http://www.fms.treas.gov/tfc/germany-claims.html.

Meanwhile, the United States Department of Justice renumerates victims and families of victims of the Vietnam War, Guam War, U.S. nationals whose Cuban property was confiscated by the Castro regime, Albanian nationals, and Iraq's 1999 invasion of Kuwait, U.S.-citizen survivors of the Holocaust and prisoners of war.

Not to leave our Canadian friends out, here's a link for sources to find unclaimed property in Canada: British Columbia Unclaimed Property Society, Canadian Bank Accounts and Revenu Québec.
 

Note that ALL OF THESE ARE FREE RESOURCES. You should never have to pay a fee to get the money that is legally yours.

HAPPY "TREASURY" HUNTING EVERYONE!!

		Jennifer D. Meacham, Gather Money Correspondent
	Jennifer's column, "The Bottom Line," is published every week to the Gather Essentials: Money channel. Jennifer is a business and personal finance columnist who covers money matters for RedwoodAge.com and real estate news for RISMedia, and co-authored the best-selling retirement investing guide "IRA Wealth: Revolutionary IRA Strategies for Real Estate Investment" (Square One Publishers, New York). Keep up on the latest news and analysis into how you can take control of your business and personal financial future by joining Jennifer's "Self-Directed Investing 101" network.

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