Income boost: Recovering unclaimed money

One great way to reach your financial goals faster is simply to bring in more money. Side hustles, one-time freelancing gigs, selling gently used items on Facebook Marketplace — all of these are great ways to boost your income. But one very simple way to give yourself a little bonus income is to check whether you’ve left any money on the table in years past through unclaimed money.

[Disclaimer: This quick post is especially for readers in the US. Other countries may well have similar systems, but I can’t speak to those.]

What is unclaimed money?

Essentially, unclaimed money is property that belongs to you, but which for some reason never actually got to you. Examples include money from old accounts that had been closed, uncashed paychecks, unredeemed gift certificates, refunds, security deposits, and more.

It may seem a little gimmicky at first, but I assure you it’s a real thing. In the US, unclaimed property is tracked by each state government. This means that to recover your property, you just need to search unclaimed property website for each state that might be relevant in your case.

You can simply google “unclaimed property” plus the name of your state, or use this website to navigate directly to the relevant sites in any states you would like to…