The essence of ecofrugality is avoiding waste. And I think we can all agree that there's nothing more wasteful than leaving money just sitting there—money that belongs to you by right— and not stretching out your hand to take it. It'd be like dropping a $20 bill on the sidewalk and not bothering to bend down and pick it up.
Yet this is, in effect, what many of us are doing by leaving money sitting in state "unclaimed funds" pools. Old bank accounts that we never bothered to close...tax refunds delivered to the wrong address...security deposits we never collected. It's all our own money, just sitting and waiting for us if we know where to look.
Money can go missing in other ways, too. For instance, you could have a savings bond you got once as a gift and forgot to cash in when it matured. Or you could be owed money as part of a class-action lawsuit that you don't even know you're a party to.
In my latest Money Crashers article, I talk about all the different places money can go missing, and how to find it and claim it. I was particularly pleased to see that this piece has already made a real difference for someone; my sister replied to my tweet about it to say, "Because of your tweet, I finally logged onto http://massmoney.com.
And now I'm a few weeks away from getting a tiny little extra payday!
It is just as delightful as the $10 I found in the pocket of my
corduroys and will likely be less wrinkled." (I had no such luck checking the unclaimed funds pool for New Jersey, but I have identified at least one class-action suit that I have a chance to cash in on.)
9 Places to Find Missing Money – How to Search for Unclaimed Funds
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