Experts esimate that over $30 billion in nationwide unclaimed money is in the hands of the US government as of present. Believe it or not, this unclaimed money is just sitting-around waiting for millions of residents of the 50 states to claim it. In New York for example, a whopping $8 billion unclaimedmoney from unclaimed tax refunds and other lost assets are owed to thousands of residents. Only a small fraction of New York State unclaimed money is returned each year, so the total amount left unclaimed snowballs over time. This is actually the case for all states across the country.

In lean times such as these, a lot of Americands are spending several minutes a day daydreaming about getting their hands on some extra cash and what they would do with it. I know I do. A person can only hope and pray so much though- sometimes we have to get up and 'sieze the day'. In this case, it's not 'carpe diem', but 'carpe muris'- sieze the mouse! Looking for missing money can be as easy as entering a person's name and SSS# in an online state database to check if their name is in that state's unclaimed property list.

The Unclaimed Property Divisions with every state don't charge for the use of their databases for an unclaimed money search, but if you've lived and worked in several different states, doing a thorough search through several state databases can be a daunting task. I've found a useful website that not only showed me a thorough method of searching for unclaimed money, and even pre-escheat funds (unclaimed money not yet in state hands). It even has an ebook on how to be a professional finder. So what are you waiting for? Sieze that mouse!