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Karma has access to your old addresses from your credit report and as such they can search for unclaimed money for that out of date contact information.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.
