Finance Wanted.

By Russ D Johnson

New Hampshire may be known as The Granite State because of its number one, and incredibly valuably natural resource, but there is another treasure hidden in this New England state that is less known. New Hampshire unclaimed money, totaling in the millions, owed to residents of the state is being held by the NH State Treasury, awaiting the rightful owners who simply need to step forward and claim what is theirs'.

New Hampshire citizens are familiar with cold weather and their famous White Mountains, but they can hit the slopes of the mountains of cold hard cash if they simply educate themselves on how to locate and claim forgotten funds already owed to them. The first obstacle is simply learning about the existence of the phenomenon of unclaimed property. Sadly, most people are still unaware of the fact that there are tens of billions of dollars in state treasury departments across the nation, just waiting to be discovered. Beyond just knowing about these monies, people need to know where and how to search for them, or they could waste a lot of time and energy without getting any payoff.

The reasons unclaimed funds are often difficult to locate are numerous, but among the most common are the lack of knowledge of the searcher on which websites to use and how often they should search.

There are many different types of property that can become abandoned and considered "unclaimed", but the state treasurer's website lists the following as the most common: "Certificates of Deposit, Stocks, Bonds, Mutual Funds, Gift Certificates, Refunds, Wages, Payroll, Salary, Commissions, Uncashed Checks, Death Benefits, Dividends, Insurance Payments, Money Orders, Paid-up Life Insurance Policies, Deposits, Demutualization Proceeds". Each type of account can only be considered "unclaimed" (and turned over to the state) after it has been dormant for a specified period of time, which is unique among each type. These dormancy periods are typically 1 to 5 years in New Hampshire, depending on the account type.

Due to the fact that each account type has it's own dormancy period, a person might search for money owed to them on a given day, when their account hasn't been turned over to the state, so the state will have no record of it. Often times, people give up at this point, not realizing that their funds might be handed over to the state the following year, or even 5 years down the road. Additionally, the state's records have to be manually updated by a human, so the accuracy of the records is questionable, because there isn't someone adding records in real time.

All of the issues with when a claim actually gets listed in the state's records won't matter if a person doesn't know where to search. Many people just search any site that has a search box, but very few of these sites have any accurate listings. Most of the "databases" are anything but. Choosing an unclaimed money site to run your searches from is key. Equally important is learning the search methods used by experts in the missing money field, and putting them to work in your own searches.

Unclaimed money and property expert Russ Johnson has been assisting Americans in finding their unclaimed money online since 1997. His site, http://www.unclaimedmoney.net, is updated regularly and offers guaranteed official searches for New Hampshire unclaimed money and missing money across the country.