I just made $50 in about five minutes. Okay, technically I didn’t exactly make it — I found it. That’s all thanks to Credit Karma‘s recently added Unclaimed Money feature.
In case you aren’t aware, Credit Karma is an extremely helpful (and completely free) site that provides you with educational credit scores, tips for improving your said scores, and much more. As mentioned, the site unveiled a new tool just this month that makes it easier to search state databases for money they might be holding for you. Just how much are we talking? According to the site’s FAQ, more than $40 billion is currently being held by various state governments because the rightful owners have not come forward!
Anyway, I was alerted to the new feature when I logged into the site today and was able to find a link under the “Resources” pull down menu. If you’re not yet on Credit Karma ( I would recommend joining), it seems you don’t even need to be signed up for the site to run a search. When you enter your name and select your state, a couple different things could happen. One option is that it will present you with a generic link to your state’s database to search further. However, in my case, it actually pulled up the $50 owed to me by the Maricopa County Community Colleges system and linked me right to where I could claim it.
This brings up an important note: be sure to run searches for other states you’ve lived in. Incidentally, although the money in question comes from my time in Arizona, it was in the California database. Presumably, this is because that’s where I lived when the refund was issued, but it really drives home the point to dive a little deeper and continue searching.
Speaking of continuing to search, I actually knew that this $50 refund existed somewhere in the ether. However, I was never able to actually claim it for one reason or another. I’m not sure if California just updated their site in some way or Credit Karma just linked me to a better resource, but I seem to have finally found success in reclaiming my long lost Grant note.
The moral of the story is it’s definitely worth taking a few minutes to head over to Credit Karma and see if you have some lost funds looking for you!