By now it seem we’ve all grown tired of what I like to call “bailoutmania”. I mean, who isn’t getting a bailout at this point? It’s starting to look like none of us should have been responsible with our money, but instead lived outside of our means so that Uncle Sam could send us some phony money. But here’s the kicker - the government is throwing tens of billions at the “Big 3″ domestic auto makers (GM, Ford, and Chrysler), even though these companies have MILLIONS in unclaimed money already owed to them, but they’ve been too lazy to claim it!
However, it seems that the big three auto makers did not account for other streams of cash. Edward Palonek founder of an Internet searchable database for unclaimed money reports that the big three have millions of dollars sitting and collecting dust. He goes on to say, “That the problem of auto makers not collecting money extends to almost all foreign car makers, such as, Toyota and Honda.”
So these missing monies may extend beyond the U.S. automakers in Detroit, but at the moment we have the exact numbers, thanks to that article. According to the article, more than $2.2 million is owed to the Ford Motor Company, and is spread across 1,300 records. GM (General Motor Company), on the other hand, has an estimated $3.4 million across more than 1,500 unclaimed funds records. At the same time, Chrysler turned up nearly 1,200 unclaimed asset listings totaling in excess of 1.6 million dollars!
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like these manufacturers ought to scrape together their own missing money before they put their hands out for billions of our tax dollars, like some common beggar! At the same time, do we really think companies that can let millions of dollars simply go missing are responsible enough to handle billions of OUR dollars to reorganize? If they aren’t smart enough to keep tighter books, why should we trust them with our money, instead of telling them to file bankruptcy like we would have to if we’d been so reckless?
Well, nothing is going to slow down the Bailoutmania Express, so I might as well stop whining… But I will encourage all of those workers who’ve lost their jobs with one of those 3 automakers to do their own unclaimed funds search, given that experts estimate that 7 in 10 Americans are due some type of claim. When times are tough, the only thing better than earned money is found money.
Word is that you are trying to wring a few more bucks out of Microsoft for your struggling Web portal.
Maybe this will help: The state of California says you have $3,008.46 worth of unclaimed Microsoft dividend checks coming your way.
Yang isn’t the only billionaire in Silicon Valley who’s got a little unclaimed cash. Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs has $465.26 waiting for him from an insurance company. Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin never picked up $1,023.91 earned as a graduate student from Stanford University, in addition to $9.53 worth of dividends from The New York Times Company. Google’s other co-founder, Larry Page, has lost track of $262.26. Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison, who currently tops Forbes’ list of the best compensated executives, can hang onto a little more Oracle stock this year: he’s got $51.43 coming from the U.S. arm of Swiss insurer Zurich.
Of course those amounts are drops in the bucket for these billionaires, but these are exactly the types of unclaimed assets being discovered by average citizens every day. The article goes on to note that these revelations come as California continues it’s attempts to reunite people with $5.3 billion in CA unclaimed cash, which we’ve discussed here a number of times. As law makers continue to salivate of these monies State Controller John Chiang still appears to be on the side of the folks, trying to reconnect 8.7 million Californians (even billionaires) with their share.
The battle for lost assets in California is all the more reason for residents of that state to get moving on their search for missing money. Mr. Chiang can’t do it all, and he’s fighting with politicians who can’t wait to get their hands on your cash, so stop procrastinating and get your unclaimed property search started today.
It was just over a month ago that we pointed out that CA abandoned assets totaled $5.1 billion, but in just a few short weeks the state has added another $200,000 to bring the total to $5.3 billion, and counting, according Mercury News.
California is sitting on $5.3 billion in abandoned property, which it gets to keep until someone claims it. Businesses turn over about $500 million a year to the controller’s office.
And the battle over CA missing money between Cali’s controller, John Chiang, and the state itself, that we’ve discussed in earlier posts, rages on:
It’s not exactly in the state’s interest to work hard at finding the rightful owners, but that’s what Chiang has been doing. He has pushed for reforms to speed up the process, and he even wants the state to pay interest on the money.
Last year the Legislature expanded his authority to track down property owners. Deputy Controller Hallye Jordan said the office has sent out more than a million notices since then, and there have been many happy reunions.
In one case, a safety deposit box sent to the state in 2006 contained several World War II military medals, including the Medal of Honor. The controller was able to track down the war hero’s family and return the medals to them.
Read the rest of the Mercury News article which contains a personal found money story from the author, but the bottom line is that with the fight over CA unclaimed property, relying on the government to get your cash back to you isn’t going to cut it.
It’s time for anyone who might be owed lost assets to step up and get searching for your money today to be sure they find every last penny, and put it back in your own pockets where it belongs!
According to Wyoming State Treasurer Joe Meyer, the state is currently holding more than $26 million in WY unclaimed money, owed to residents of the state.
A recent Wyoming brief from the Jackson Hole Star Tribune provides details:
State Treasurer Joe Meyer’s office will hold its annual Wyoming Windfall campaign starting Monday in an effort to return $26 million in unclaimed property to its rightful owners.
Wyoming unclaimed money takes a lot of forms, but the article lists a few of the most common:
Most of what the office returns is cash — uncollected wages, uncashed money orders, oil and gas royalties, stocks, bonds and mutual funds.
The article goes on to note that if you’re lucky, you could be in for a massive amount of missing money:
Meyer said the average claim is less than $100, but some have claimed $100,000 or more.
This is all good news for all residents of Wyoming, but you can’t get paid if you’ve never played. The only way to claim unclaimed property is to perform a thorough search using tried and true methods perfected by experienced searchers.
This blog has mentioned the legal mess surrounding California’s unclaimed property program before, but it seems there is no end in sight. After a recent ruling that took the side of people who are owed a share of the CA unclaimed funds, the citizens, and took the position that the state had handled lost assets improperly, lawyers for state politicians rushed to try to stop the bleeding, as this will greatly affect the state’s ability to (wastefully) spend money. Sure, California politicians will always find a way to tax and spend, but they were counting on taking money owed to citizens and blowing it as well.
Attorneys for California’s controller are in court trying to head off a ruling that could cost the state millions of dollars. It all stems from the state’s handling of billions of dollars in unclaimed property, taken from taxpayers without notice.
Generally unclaimed money becomes “unclaimed” because it is difficult to contact the rightful owner for one reason or another, but more often than not it relates to a change of address in one way or another. It is generally recommended that the citizens learn how to search for missing money on their own because the states are simply incompetent when it comes to this matter.
California is in a league of its own!
“In our case, they took 200 shares of GE stock, and sold it. We’ve been at the same address for 34-years, but they couldn’t find us.“
This is NOT an isolated incident, and it is exactly the sort of nonsense that makes it all the more clear that residents of any state, but California especially, need to know how to search for their own forgotten funds if they are truly intent on tracking them down.
California is making desperate moves to prevent people from reuniting with their cash. Don’t let them keep yours! This legal battle is far from over and the only way to ensure you don’t forfeit money owed to you as this drags out, is to locate it yourself and claim it ASAP.
Each year the unclaimed property division of treasury departments in all 50 states receive millions of dollars in forgotten money, and Pennsylvania is no exception. In fact Pennsylvania stands out in that of the tens of billions in unclaimed money out there, PA alone is home to more than $1 billion.
According to Treasurer Robin Wiessmann, the annual letter campaign is just one of many methods the department uses to find the owners of more than $1 billion in unclaimed property.
Sadly, these letter campaigns and other efforts to give money back to the rightful owners are unsuccessful more often than not for a variety of reasons. The only true way to find ALL Pennsylvania unclaimed money owed to you, is to learn the proper way to search for yourself! The government isn’t good at much of anything, why would they be good at reuniting you with your lost cash?
The article in the Tribune Democrat goes on to list some of the more common types of unclaimed assets:
Each year, the department receives unclaimed property from abandoned bank accounts, forgotten stocks, uncashed checks, certificates of deposit, life insurance policies, safe deposit boxes and other sources.
The article also mentions how much has been returned to owners recently:
The department maintains custody of the property until it is returned to its rightful owners. As of Nov. 30, nearly 60,000 owners were reunited with unclaimed property totaling more than $80 million.
Not bad, but when you consider the fact that there is a BILLION in PA unclaimed money, $80 million is just a drop in the bucket, especially when more money is coming in all the time. Once again, the only way to be confident in a lost asset search is if you do your own, but you need to learn how to thoroughly search from experts before you waste time chasing ghosts.
The state Treasurer’s Office is holding $1.4 billion in unclaimed property for 10.2 million residents and businesses.
The current Illinois population is roughly 12.8 million, which means that if you assume that the vast majority of the 10.2 million “residents and businesses” are in fact “residents”, roughly 8 in 10 are owed money!
You won’t find those odds anywhere! What more incentive does a person need to get started on their search for IL unclaimed money?
Learn the best methods for locating lost cash, bone up on how to avoid making mistakes others often do, and turn your missing money in to found money today! Don’t you think you should be spending your money how you want, rather than allowing it to sit in some dusty government office?
As recently as May of this year, MD Comptroller Peter Franchot reported that his office is currently holding $580 million in Maryland unclaimed money, according to an article in The Examiner. The article also reported on one massive unclaimed property return:
“We were holding over $800,000 in stock” for one man, Franchot told one of the customers holding the 714,000 accounts that have been returned to the state. In fiscal 2006, the state handed over $50 million to about 42,000 individuals.
The article goes on to explain the success of a recent lost money outreach program:
“We do a lot of outreach,” said Lynn Hall, manager of the property unit. Since the inserts ran two weeks ago, the state has received more than 12,000 calls, with more than 8,700 making apparently legitimate claims.
Despite these successes, the citizens ought to take it upon themselves to locate their own MD unclaimed money, because if history teaches us anything, it’s that government is inefficient if it’s anything. To guarantee that a resident of The Old Line State find their unclaimed assets.
Learning to find your name on an unclaimed money list is often easier said than done, but assistance from an unclaimed funds expert can help beginners sidestep issues that get in between other people and their cash.
As if the HALF A BILLION DOLLARS in Washington unclaimed money wasn’t enough, the state is about to take in another $100 Million, according to a recent article on the website of NBC affiliate KHQ.
This first excerpt from the article is a perfect example of why I can’t stress the search tip “search often”, enough:
Businesses are required to report unclaimed paychecks, deposits, refunds, escrow proceeds and similar items to the Department by Nov. 1 of each year, and the Department received a substantial amount this year, Unclaimed Property Manager Patti Wilson said.
Now, what if you’d searched at any point this year before Nov. 1. Even October 31. The State of Washington would have no record of your missing money. Worse, they’re so buried by accounts being turned over, that even today, November 21, your claim wouldn’t be reflected in the state’s records. And of course if your account hasn’t been dormant long enough, it may not be added to the database until next year. Again, “search often” is rule #1 in this game.
Now for the juicy stuff:
“We’re still processing it all, but we expect it to total close to $100 million involving 500,000 or more names,” she said.
And that’s on top of $500 million owed to more than 3 million people already in the searchable online database.
Essentially this means that unclaimed money in Washington will total $600 MILLION!!! And the best part is, with a population of less than 6.5 million, the odds are more likely that you’re owed money than not!!! (Especially when you consider that only 4.8 million are adults, and we’re looking at roughly 3.5 million being owed unclaimed property!!!)
It pays to keep checking. Bruce Bleckert of Tacoma recently received $4,035 on two claims. He had checked for unclaimed property previously under his name, but these claims were under his wife’s name. Virginia Hanson of Woodinville received $2,226 from a Midwestern financial bank related to an escrow for a home, and Kymberlee Elliott of Vancouver got $188 from a company where she had once worked.
The article closes with a record return stat - “$39.4 million to more than 82,000 claimants in fiscal year 2007“.
There’s no reason you won’t be part of the stat for 2008, especially given the odds!
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