Find Lost Money

While you are waiting for my review of Mechnical Turk, here’s a topic I’ve been meaning to write about.  It’s not work, but could bring in some money anyway.

Have you heard of these “finding lost money” sites and thought they were all scams?  Do you firmly believe that you know where all your money is, and there can’t possibly be any lost money sitting in an account you don’t know about? You could be wrong, just like I was.  I’d heard of those sites, they even reported on them on the local news, but I resisted trying them out for years. When I happened across http://www.missingmoney.com/  a few months ago I decided to plug in my name and to my surprise found I had some missing money.  I claimed it and it arrived 2 months later.

To make a claim you will have to enter personal information including your SS number. I’m always suspicious of scams and phishing so I didn’t immediately enter my information to make the claim.  I searched for the site several different ways to make sure the link was going to the legitimate site.  Usually the money is being held in a state government treasury so only give out your sensitive information to the government site, never to a third party that claims they will assist you in making the claim.  You may have to send documentation proving that you are the person who owns the money including, as in my case, something that proves you lived at the address they have connected to the money.  It’s a relatively painless way to add to your bank account.

So even if you are “sure” you don’t have any lost money, check it out, you might be pleasantly surprised.