MissingMoney.com: Maybe There Really is a Free Lunch

This is exciting. Due to economic woes, Americans are searching for money -- anywhere -- that may belong to them. MissingMoney.com is one such place. It is free and is very simple to use. The site performs a search based on your name and location to find money or property that belongs to you.

According to SearchEngineWatch.com, the most common types of unclaimed property and cash are:

1. Bank accounts; 2. Stocks, bonds, mutual funds and dividends; 3. Uncashed checks and wages; 4. Insurance policies; 5. Utility deposits; 6. Safe deposit box contents; 7. Escrow accounts; 8. Trust funds; 9. Certificates of deposits.

Real estate is not counted nor reported on.

The article goes on to report that the following states already have their information in the database: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin.

These states will soon be followed by Illinois and Rhode Island.

I live in Illinois so I was not able to test it myself. However, I have friends in Maine and they did try it out based on the instructions. While they didn't get any money, they said they could see how people would be able to receive funds.

The important thing to remember is that any of these "found funds" are already yours by law.

Illinois has a property recovery program called "Cashback" which goes through the state comptroller's office to check for cash only, not property. A couple of years ago, my wife and I heard about it and found something for my wife. It wasn't a lot of money but it's always nice to get money no matter how much.

The only problem with the program was that it took about nine months for the money to get processed.

References:

http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080714-104131