The Great Colorado Payback may have money, money, money with your name on it!
Who couldn’t use a little more moola, am I right? You may not know it, but you could have some coming your way, and the state of Colorado wants to help you find it.
The Great Colorado Payback
The Great Colorado Payback is managed by the Colorado State Treasurer’s Office, and it seeks to reunite Colorado residents with unclaimed property in their name.
According to the website, “Unclaimed property is unclaimed or abandoned intangible property. It includes checking and savings accounts, certificates of deposit, overpayments, insurance checks, payroll checks, utility refunds, money orders, uncashed checks, dividends, stocks, bonds, contents of safe deposit boxes and more.”
Many people aren’t aware of the money they have floating out there, but the organization originally holding it has to make every effort to contact you. If they can’t, they report it to the state of your last known address, which is how it ends up as part of the Great Colorado Payback.
This means funds in that childhood savings account you totally forgot about, or an insurance payout from a company that couldn’t find you after a move may be just a few keystrokes away.
Is it too Good to be True?
This is legit! According to the site, $409,609,533 has been returned to the rightful owners, to date.
I have personally found lost money through the site, not once, but twice! To this day, I’m not entirely sure where it came from, but I believe it was from an insurance payout. Just don’t count on any found money to fill your bank account quickly. It took significant time to receive the payout the first time (think many, many months after filing the claim, but the program was fairly new at that time); the second time moved quite a bit faster.
Show me the Money
The process of checking for unclaimed money is fairly easy. Go to the Great Payback site, and get the ball rolling by simply filling in your information. The results will tell you if there is possible property out there with your name on it.
Pro tip: Try searching on variations of your name, such as John Doe; Doe; J. Doe; etc. to try to catch any possible property. You also might search your name and all different Colorado cities you’ve lived in, just in case the last address known was not where you currently live.
Once you find property, it will provide you with a claim form that you need to fill out and mail in (certain dollar amounts will also require notarization). You will be required to provide proof of your identity as part of the form, as well.
After that, you can check the status of your claim on the site, as well.
Bonus tip: If you’ve lived in other states, each one has a similar website. Or, you can skip them and go directly to MissingMoney.com to search nationwide for lost or forgotten property.
So, what are you waiting for? Check for cash and stake your claim!
