Update: The automated searching now works in 14 states (up from 5 at launch) California, Florida, Georgia,
Credit Karma started by offering it’s users free credit scores & credit monitoring. As free credit scores (and more importantly free FICO scores) have become more prevalent they have been added new features such as free tax returns to stay relevant. Today they have added a new feature and that’s the ability to search for unclaimed money held with state governments.
They claim that there is more than $40 billion sitting with state governments owed to individuals. They describe how it works as follows:
They offer proactive monitoring and notifications for the following states:
- California
- Georgia
- New Jersey
- New York
- Texas
You’re also able to manually search for it in other states as well. This new feature shouldn’t come as a surprise as Credit Karma acquired a start up called Claimdog that did exactly this. According to Credit Karma they were able to find $75 million in unclaimed funds for more than 600,000 of it’s users in California. We recommend having a Credit Karma account to easily monitor your Equifax & TransUnion reports anyway so any new features should only be a positive.
Another positive is that Credit Karma has access to your old addresses from your credit report and as such they can search for unclaimed money for that out of date contact information. If anybody gives it a go, let us know if you found any unclaimed money.
just found $500 from FL. It was a deposit paid to AT&T for my cellphone account required because I had just moved to the US for college. Totally forgot about that deposit and evidently AT&T never proactively refunded it to me. Thanks for the post DOC!
I got like $33 from when I used to work at Wendy’s in high school and never went back to pick up my last paycheck. I’ve known it was there all these years, but just never bothered tracking it down.
Found $300+ from car insurance premium refunds! Thanks DoC!!
Hey guys, what happened to this website feature of seeing how many credit cards have been opened and sort them by dates (from oldest to newest or newest to oldest).
I do not see that feature anymore (especially important and handy with Chase 5/24 rule).
Any idea how to do it on their new website or by any another website help?
I used this feature several weeks ago and actually found more than $5000 in unclaimed property from California that was in my name!
you crazy bro. how is that even possible… nice man.
What was it for?
i hope he didnt think everything with his first and last name meant it was his… haha… woops.
Nice. Just found $65 from state of CA. Thanks DoC!
wow. so shocked so many readers have unclaimed money. so jealous! but I guess it happens. since its difficult to imagine people not knowing someone owes them money, I assume 99% of discovered money has to do with companies paying you back for something you never knew was coming or entitled to. like class action or product defects or other refunds from “internal audits” after many years.
Would be interesting to see some stats from Credit Karma to determine where the majority of money is coming from.
yea. true. but you just need to do random searches to look at the pattern. it becomes pretty obvious that people never new anything was amiss.
i just did a CA search for William Charles and got hits related to:
H & R BLOCK TAX SERVICES
Misc Outstanding Checks
WESTERN UNION FINANCIAL SERVICES INC
Misc Outstanding Checks
BLACKHAWK ENGAGEMENT SOLUTIONS
Misc Outstanding Checks
INTUIT INC.
Misc Outstanding Checks
– These people have no idea there was a check made out to them. then you have some who probably had family deaths and safe deposit box expired:
SANTA MONICA BANK BR #06
SD Box Contents
CALIFORNIA BANK & TRUST
SD Box Contents
90$ combined for me and my wife in TX and CO. Thank you for this post!
I found $115 in between family members. I eventually just switched over to the state’s website instead.
Found $26 from City Bank for a relative. Thanks DoC!