It was only back in April that Flexo wrote about MissingMoney.com. I had heard about it once before through a friend on Twitter who said he’d had some success and so I figured, “What have I got to lose?” They don’t charge anything, it’s just a convenient way to get at some abandoned money that should be yours in the first place.
I searched for myself in the three different states in which I’ve lived and found an entry tied to an old street address of mine for “More than $100″. I had to continue the process on a different site for that State, but since all they really needed was my name, it wasn’t that much of a hassle, and I never felt I was being scammed.
In my case the funds I was missing out on were submitted by Daimler Chrysler, which means it had something to do with the aftermath of totaling my car back in 2001. Ultimately, in order to claim the missing money, I needed to mail (or submit via a form on a Web page) some proof that I used to live at that address. Something like a utility bill or a bank statement. I don’t keep those sorts of things any longer than I have to, which to me means, “throw away as soon as you’re not using them anymore.”
However, crashing your car isn’t just an event, it’s a process that can go on, at a minimum, for weeks. A lot of paperwork is generated. I started keeping everything in a folder so I could prove the facts of the case at a moment’s notice. I figured seven years is a good amount of time to hang on to something that important, so in 2008, while pruning the filing cabinet, I very nearly got rid of the folder. Luckily, something stopped me, and a few months later, I was able to scan and e-mail the actual police report that described the accident, and included my address.
A couple of weeks later I got a check for $155. Naturally, I deposited it and made a $155 payment to one of my two remaining credit cards. If I’d received that money when I was supposed to in 2001… well, I can’t say exactly what I would’ve done with it, but some of it probably would’ve gone toward beer.
Updated July 31, 2008 and originally published May 23, 2008. If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to the RSS feed or receive daily emails. Follow @flexo on Twitter and visit our Facebook page for more updates.
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Luke Landes founded Consumerism Commentary in 2003 and has been building online communities since 1990. Luke, also known as Flexo, has contributed to PC World Magazine, US News, Forbes, and other publications. 
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I need to check and see if I have any money hanging out there somewhere. Maybe it will be millions and millions…LOL!
That’s great that you got some money you didn’t even know was yours – and I guess it’s a good thing that it waited seven years to come back to you so that you could use it to pay down debt instead of buying beer :)