CHARLOTTE, N.C. — It’s been a tough go of it, financially speaking, for so many people. Job loss, furloughs, and pay cuts. While the stimulus helped offset some, we have a new way for you to find money, money that belonged to you, all along.
Lucy Johnson, a lawyer by trade, and her sister Jane, a research librarian who lives in Charlotte, had some downtime in quarantine and remembered that states often must hold on to unclaimed money from refunds. With a little digging, they were able to find a little nest egg they were owed.
Johnson told "Where's the Money" Reporter Bill McGinty she tracked down $356. Her husband found more than $500 he was owed and when they checked her husband's father who passed away, there was about $1,600 in unclaimed funds in his name.
Chances are, you moved and left money on the table you didn’t know about, maybe it was a deposit, or a refund, or a medical overpayment. By law, the state must hold it. Wouldn’t a few hundred, or thousand be nice right about now?
So here is how you do it. First, google unclaimed property for whatever state you lived in before. There will be a link where you can type in your name and the previous city you lived in and a search will return whether or not you have any unclaimed money there. You do need documentation, but the process is really that simple.
As for Johnson, she's planning to do something special with her newly found money.
“I am hoping to do something personal, rather than just give it to the food bank, I want to go and buy the food and take it, that’s my plan,” said Johnson.
