Have you stashed away some money and then forgotten about it? It’s possible that you could be sitting on a small fortune and not even know it.
There could even be money owed to you from unpaid wages or lost superannuation that you don’t know about. It’s like winning the lottery without buying a ticket.
There’s a whopping $677 million sitting in lost accounts, and more than 1 million people could be sitting on a small windfall.
You could get lucky and have unclaimed money if you:
- haven’t made a transaction on your cheque or savings account for over three years
- stopped making payments on a life insurance policy
- moved without leaving a forwarding address
- have noticed that regular dividend or interest cheques have stopped coming, or
- were the executor of a deceased estate.
Fortunately, the Australian Securities & Investments Commission has made it as easy as possible to look for lost money. Simply visit ASIC’s MoneySmart website at moneysmart.gov.au and start searching.
ASIC can access unclaimed money from bank, credit union or building society accounts, shares and life insurance policies. They say that one of the more common reasons why people lose money is because they change address. In 2011, Australians recovered $56 million using this service.
The rule is that if you don’t claim what is yours, then the government gets to keep it. All the more reason to get searching.
In the past, if you happened to have an inactive bank account or life insurance policy it would be transferred to ASIC after seven years. According to the government, the downfall of this was that your money could be eroded by fees and inflation. This timeframe was recently reduced to three years to ensure that lost bank accounts are better protected from erosion.
Also, from 1 July 2013, interest will be paid on unclaimed money held by ASIC at the rate of CPI inflation, and this interest will be tax-free.
The downfall is that you need to be active with your accounts at least every three years to avoid having them moved to ASIC – where they could earn less than you had planned. You can no longer set your investments and forget about them for a while, then expect to access your money easily on a rainy day.
It’s free to search at www.moneysmart.gov.au/tools-and-resources/find-unclaimed-money. You could even find lost superannuation, lost share dividends or unpaid wages on MoneySmart.
Didn’t get lucky?
The worst that could happen is that you don’t find any lost money. And that isn’t too bad for a few minutes of looking around.
Other ways to find money include:
- Do a budget you may find some spare money
- Reduce your credit card debt and stop paying extra interest charges
- Switch your mortgage to a lower rate
- Save in a high-interest savings account
- Check if you are entitled to any government benefits.
Moneylogue 