Finance Wanted.

By Russ D Johnson

As the smallest state in the nation, Rhode Island is justifiably nicknamed "Little Rhody", but there's nothing little about the amount of Rhode Island unclaimed money currently being held by the RI Office of the General Treasurer. According to the office's website, the state now holds more than $124 million of the citizens money, and the only thing preventing people from taking back their cash is knowledge and the ability to properly search.

It's understandable that people have trouble accepting the reality of unclaimed funds because no one expects to get free money. But "free" isn't the correct term to describe these lost assets, because they technically already belong to the people who can claim them (except in cases where they come from a deceased relative). So people who dismiss this phenomenon as some sort of myth are doing themselves a disservice by not recognizing exactly where these monies come from.

According to the Office of the General Treasurer's website, the following are some of the most common types of unclaimed assets in Rhode Island: "bank accounts, stocks and dividends, wages, refunds, safe deposit boxes, insurance payments, gift certificates, credit memos, account receivable credits and payables". There are many other types, but those are the most common, and each is considered abandoned or "unclaimed" after a certain number of years of inactivity. Once this dormancy period has passed, the holders are required to hand them over to the state for safe keeping until the rightful owner claims them. The state never actually takes possession of them, so there is no time limit to claim lost money.

Even after learning the process by which assets become unclaimed, it is still tough to wrap our minds around the fact that there are hundreds of millions owed to RI residents, and tens of billions nationwide. It's difficult to believe that people have simply forgotten about these monies, but the fact is they have. In fact it has been estimated that nationally 7 in 10 people are due a claim. The trouble is knowing how to find and claim our money.

More often than not, people get in their own way of locating their unclaimed property by doing things like searching the wrong websites and searching just once. Not all unclaimed money sites are the same. Many don't have any real lost money records, and even those that do often contain mostly outdated data. Even official state records are notoriously inaccurate because they are not updated in real time. Given that assets are turned over all the time, and each type has it's own dormancy period, a record for a given person's name might not be added to the system until the day, week or month after they search, leaving them with the false conclusion that they aren't owed money.

Although in recent years Rhode Island has stepped up efforts to return forgotten funds to the rightful owners, more money continues to come in than is returned to the owners, so the total will continue to grow, giving every citizen a better chance of finding a claim. The state simply doesn't have the capability to efficiently locate everyone who is owed money so the best thing residents of RI can do is to learn how to search like professional finders do, and then use those tactics to maximize their search potential.

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 Rhode Island unclaimed money and missing money across the country.