9 Tips to Prevent Your Money From Going to the State

Nearly every day there are articles on the Web and TV explaining where to search for the $33 billion held by the state unclaimed property offices.
Isn’t this backwards? Shouldn’t we be focused on preventing our money from going to the state?
Here are 9 tips you can use right now:
1. Keep in contact with your accounts This is the most important thing you can do to keep your accounts from getting turned over to the state. The key is “customer-initiated” activity. Just because your savings account is earning interest doesn’t mean it has customer-initiated activity. Don’t forget your children’s accounts. Once a year call and check on the balance. Make a deposit or withdrawal. The dormancy period begins with the last activity on the account. I do this on my birthday as a present to myself.
2. Your stocks need your attention, too. Don’t rely on someone else to do this for you. Like bank accounts, you need to have customer-initiated activity. Your proxy vote does not count toward this. The State of Washington enacted legislation in 2011 that allows the State Treasurer to sell the stocks as soon as they come into state possession, regardless of what the market is doing. In Delaware, it doesn’t matter that your DRIP account is on auto pilot and functioning splendidly. If there is no owner-initiated activity, you plan is at risk of getting turned over to the state.
The high dollar listings held by the states are stocks. In November 2011, a woman in Missouri received $6.1 million from stocks she knew nothing about that had been in her family for generations. New York returned $4 million to an individual from a stock claim. Pay attention to when you are supposed to get your dividends. If they don’t come when expected, follow up.
3. Update your beneficiary information This is often overlooked. Call today and make sure the beneficiary name and contact information are correct. In addition, tell your beneficiary about the policy and who it’s through. FindYourPolicy.com allows you to enter the name of your life insurance company for free in case your beneficiary forgets the name. There is a small fee for them to get access to the information with a portion going to cancer research.
4. Ask for utility deposits to be refunded now. If you’ve been current with your utility payments for at least one year ask about getting your deposit for electricity, water and gas refunded. If they say it happens automatically, ask when you can expect to see it. In fact, requesting that it be credited to your account is even better because then there is no chance of the check getting lost.
5. Make sure you get your final paycheck This sounds obvious. But if the last day that you work is the first day of the new pay period, you will have two paychecks coming, not one. If in doubt, check with your human resources department for when you can expect your final check. Should you pick it up or will they mail it? Make sure they have your correct address.
6. Change your address Notify everyone you do business with including businesses that you get online bills from or do online banking with of a change is name or address. The change of address service with the Post Office is only good for one year. Notify your employer even if you’re leaving the job. In addition, change your address with the retirement plan administrator and all of the employer-sponsored benefit plans such as health, dental, vision and life insurance. Your employer is not responsible for doing this.
Notify the IRS, too. Don’t laugh. Tax refunds are not forwarded. There is $153 million in tax refunds being held by the IRS that were returned because of a bad address. This involves nearly 100,000 people. You have three years to claim it or they will keep it. If you’re missing yours, go to irs.gov and click “Where’s My Refund?” You’ll need your Social Security number, filing status and the whole dollar amount you were expecting.
7. Cash every check How many times have you stuck a check in a drawer to deposit later? It gets showed to the back and then outdates. Eventually it ends up in unclaimed property.
8. Don’t forget your digital assets. These are things such as a Paypal account, an Ebay or Amazon store, credits on Party Poker or iTunes. In addition, there is value to domain names you own. Marc Ostrofsky, author of Get Rich Click says “Domain names are the real estate of the Internet.”
Online digital photos may not have financial value, but can be priceless.
If your family does not have your login and password information, they money may wither away in limbo until it gets turned over to the state. They may not be able to renew valuable domain names and that can have disastrous consequences for an established business.
9. Make a list of your financial assets and make sure someone knows where to find it. Don’t forget to include not only if you have a safe deposit box, but also the bank and branch plus the box number and where the key is located.
Follow these simple steps to keep your money in your pocket where it belongs and out of state hands. Check your state unclaimed property site here. Search at least once a year as new listings are continually added. Never, ever pay for an online search.