Unclaimed: Forgotten Funds

When it comes to making more money and bumping up your bank balance, it isn’t always the case that you will have to work harder to make a difference. In the United States alone, there is more than $32 billion of money going unclaimed by millions of people. If you can identify any of these ‘forgotten funds’ that you might be due, you could make your life a whole lot easier without really having to do very much at all.

Below are some of the most common sources of forgotten funds:

Old Bank Accounts

Dormant bank accounts are a huge source of forgotten funds. It might sound surprising, but many of us open up savings accounts and then forget about them in the preceding years. By checking through your paperwork to see if you may have left a bank account dormant, you could end up with a nice little windfall.

The IRS

We tend to think of the Internal Revenue Service as an organization that only ever takes money from us, but it is a prominent source of unclaimed money in the form of tax refunds. Many of us pay more tax than we need to at least some of the time, and mostly we’ll get that tax back in a timely manner. Sometimes. That doesn’t happen, and our refund never shows up, which is why it’s always worth checking the “Where’s My Refund?” section if the IRS website to see if you could be owed any money.

Benefits

There are various benefits that are available to various individuals across the country for a variety of reasons. From benefits for total disability due to individual unemployment for veterans to disability benefits for disabled children, there is a whole lot of help out there that you may be entitled to. If you have even an inkling that you could be entitled to anything, check it out now.

Insurance Policies

If you bought a life insurance policy long ago, but you’ve since stopped making the payments, don’t throw it out and forget about it because many life insurance policies have a monetary value that you could benefit from right now, even if the policy is lapsed. Give the insurance company a call and see if you can make a claim before you toss it.

Pensions

If you’ve had various pension plans with various companies over the years, there is a very good chance that you could also sell those if you can find them, which could be difficult depending on how organized you are, but which is certainly worth attempting, nonetheless.

Savings Bonds

Have you ever been given savings bonds as a gift, or bought them in the dim and distant past? If so, you might want to check out the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Public Debt which is currently playing host to billions of dollars worth of forgotten bonds just waiting to be reclaimed.

There’s nothing better than ‘free’ money, and since there’s billions of dollars going unclaimed, chances are you could lay your hands on some, it’s just a matter of taking action!