Do You Have Money You Don’t Know About?
May 18, 2022 6:48 PM 
You might be sitting on millions… Maybe hundreds… Possibly a dollar’s worth of pennies, that you are unaware of. Free money! Forgotten moolah.
How do you know if you’ve got secret money stashed somewhere?
I asked Patti Wilson with the Department of Revenue for the State of Washington that very question. Here’s how our conversation went.
Dan: You’re with the Department of Revenue. And you’re NOT calling to say that I owe you money?
Patti: Usually that is the case, but with unclaimed property, we’re actually trying to give money away that we’re holding on to.
Dan: And is it easy to give money away? Are you finding it difficult?
Patti: Since last July we’ve returned $70 million (for the fiscal year). So I think we’re doing pretty good getting money out.
So where would this money be coming from?
Dan: Wouldn’t I know if I have unclaimed property?
Patti: A lot of folks don’t. You move and you forget to leave a forwarding address and you have a deposit coming back to you, or you’ve set up a bank account, and then you forget about it, and you move… Or you have a check that was issued by a company and you didn’t realize you had a refund coming. You know, different reasons.
Is there an expiration date on when I can claim my money?
Patti: Nope. there is no expiration date. We hold on to the funds forever, until the rightful owner comes forward to claim it.
Where do I go to see if I actually have unclaimed property?
Patti: You go to claimyourcash.org, and we have a searchable database that folks can enter their name, or their family members names, and just see if we’re holding any unclaimed property.
If I find something, how soon can I get my hands on that money?
Patti: We try to get that money out as quickly as possible, to the rightful owners. Currently, it’s taking about eight weeks for us to refund the money.
Dan: They didn’t even know it existed, so what’s another eight weeks?
Do you have forgotten funds?
Go here and find out.
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