This may only apply to folks here in the States, but it's worth checking out in your own nation / province / whatever.

Anyway, our state Treasurer came onto a radio show today to talk about unclaimed property, and how WI is holding something like half a billion worth in various forms. So I went onto the State Treasurer's website (the .gov site), did a search with our last name, and found that both my wife and my sister-in-law had small amounts sitting in limbo, waiting to be claimed.

So it's worth a quick peek. This is probably run through the individual state governments but some states might use a clearinghouse to take care of this stuff. You can go to this site: http://unclaimed.org/, click on your state, and it should open the official .gov site where you can check for your name. If you're paranoid about getting scammed, do a search for your state's Treasury site and follow those links instead. I started off with "Wisconsin unclaimed property" and it took me straight to the right place.

Take a look, and hopefully you'll have a little something waiting for you to claim. Of course, make sure you're going to the official state site for this, since there is some scamming out there. And some third-party sites are legitimate but they make you pay a fee for info you can already get for free.

Interesting to be sure......gonna check it out when the website I found is done with maintenance.

My state, California, seems to have this program too - I went the state government's website and did a search - it brought up my state controller's site where they claim there is $6.1 billion dollars worth in unclaimed property spread over 17 million people. I doubt there will be anything for me or my family though (EDIT And indeed nothing came up). But it was interesting to learn about.