I Found About $1000 In Money Owed to Me in 10 Minutes (for real)

Posted on | 1 Comment

Have you heard of people receiving unclaimed money and thought it was a scam? It’s not! Unclaimed cash is simply money owed to you, like refunds from overpaying utilities or doctor’s bills. Today, Jaime is sharing about her true experience finding $1000 owed to her. Not only is she sharing about it, but she also describes the steps you need to take to find money owed to you!

I’ve noticed several posts on Facebook, informing SC residents of a website to search for unclaimed money being held by the State Treasurer. I honestly thought it was a scam to steal my social security number, identity or bank account information, so I decided to do a little research and find out if it was too good to be true.

Claiming my cash

I verified that there are legitimate websites that many State Treasuries are using to help find people, and give them back money that is already theirs. Every state has a law that requires unclaimed money and property be sent to the State’s Unclaimed Property Program which holds the assets until the owner can be found.

This money could be from overpayments, due wages, returned deposits, stocks, bonds, etc. When a company can not locate the owner of the money, they turn it over to the State Treasurer. The State of South Carolina currently has over $550 million dollars they are holding, even after returning $33 million last year. With the technology available to us today, it’s never been easier for us to find out if money is owed to us.

I used the SC Treasurer’s Website and the NC Treasurer’s Website and found about $1000 that was owed to us!

Could you have unclaimed cash?

Here’s how it went down and my tips for checking to see if you also have money to claim:

  1. Check the State Treasury websites for each state where you’ve lived. I’ve lived in SC and NC, so I checked both of those. You can find a full list of state websites at Today.com.
  2. Check every name you use – maiden names, nicknames, abbreviations, common misspellings of your name. My name is spelled unusually, but because it was originally misspelled by the company that owed me money, I found it under the misspelling with my former address.
  3. Check all of the addresses where you’ve lived.
  4. Check your spouse’s name, and children’s names.
  5. You can search the names of friends and family to let them know if they are on the list, but they will have to submit the claims.

If you find a notice under your name, you will follow the steps to verify you are who you say you are, and claim it. I had 3 different claims. One in my name, one in my husband’s name, and one in both of our names. For the first two claims, I was able to fill everything out online and the checks arrived in a few weeks. For the third claim, I had to fill out the online claim and also send proof of identification via email to the State Treasurer.

The first two smaller claims were tax-related, but the third and largest claim was for overpayment on an insurance policy! We had no idea, and that money had been sitting at the State Treasurer for almost 10 years. I still wasn’t 100% convinced until all the money had safely been deposited into our account, but now I’m a believer!

If you have any questions, you can contact the State Treasurer’s Office at 803.734.2101. I’m so glad I took the time to check this out and you should too!

About the Author

Sign up for our email newsletter.

Subscribe
Notify of

1 Comment
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Cassie H.
4 years ago

THANK YOU for this! I ended up finding over $1k i was owed. What’s better is i searched all my family members as well and found some for them! My grandfather was thrilled. 😊