If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  I think we’d all agree to that statement, right?  I thought so.

So, if someone tells you that there might be some cash sitting around in a state or federal government coffer with your name on it, just waiting for you to stake a claim on it, your first reaction probably involves rolling your eyes while shaking your head.  It sounds too good to be true.

In this case, though, we need to remember that the age-old expression with which we started isn’t an absolute.  That “probably” is in there for a reason.  Sometimes things sound too good to be true AND are.  So it is with unclaimed money.  There really is a lot of it floating around out there and some of it could belong to you.

That doesn’t mean you should immediately agree to pay someone a few bucks (or a percentage) to find it for you, though.  It also doesn’t mean that you should start dialing a number with an 809 area code in search of unclaimed funds.

That’s because many of the “we’ll find your unclaimed money” operations ARE scams.  They provide precious little information and no actual money while snagging a bit of your own cash in the process.  Others aren’t necessarily scamming anyone, but it’s probably going to be just as easy for you to search for your unclaimed cash yourself than it will be to set up an account with them.

The best way to get your unclaimed money, if it happens to be out there, is to visit the designated state sites that administer these programs.  Most of us don’t move from state to state every few weeks, so it’s pretty easy to isolate the places we should look.

You can find a state unclaimed funds program using Google, but here’s an even easier way to get the info.   NAUPA provides direct links to every state’s unlcaimed property and funds sites.

The actual process of checking for your potential hidden treasure is fast.  You go to the NAUPA site, use it to get to your state site and perform a quick check using your name.  I was able to run through the three states in which I’ve lived within about 3 minutes.

And guess what…  I found some unclaimed money.  An old utility deposit.  It only took a few more clicks to print the state’s PDF for making a claim and another couple of minutes to fill it out.  I’m now one stamp and a few weeks from the State Treasurer supplying me with a few bonus bucks.

Here’s the way I see it.  We live in a pretty complicated world.  We make deposits and run up credits and debits all over the place.  In time, the volume of these becomes high enough that there is a reasonable likelihood that you’re owed money from an old dormant account that you didn’t officially close, a deposit your forgot to reclaim, or something else.

It doesn’t take long to find out and there’s a decent chance that you do have something coming to you.  It’s worth checking.  I wouldn’t have bothered to check (my “If it sounds to good to be true…” instinct is strong) if I wasn’t planning to write this post, but now I’m glad I did.  I’ll get a check for around $125 because I took the time to run my name through a few government-operated websites.

I didn’t find out that I had a small fortune sitting in a safe deposit box with my name on it, or anything, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with $125, either.