How I made $3000 in 4 minutes and 47 seconds.
Bankers hate him! ... But that's mostly due to his personality...
In the medieval ages, kings could reclaim land and property from peasants when the peasant died without an heir, or if the peasant was executed for a crime.
As you can imagine, it became very profitable to start executing people for almost any crime, since you could justify taking all their stuff for free. This was known as escheatment, the state reclaiming abandoned or unclaimed assets.
These days, the government doesn’t just take all the assets of people that have been convicted of a crime, or else *insert billionaire that you personally don’t like – it could be any one of them* would be a heck of a lot poorer than they are right now. But escheatment still happens today.
When you find a $50 note of the ground, you return to your childhood adage ‘Finders Keepers’ and continue on your day.
When you find a $50 cheque on the ground, directed to Mr P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney, it’s a little harder to justify the same prepubescent dictum. Even if Sherman doesn’t live at 42 Wallaby Way anymore, and the new owner doesn’t know where he moved to, you still can’t try and cash the cheque.
This is the same problem for banks. They might have a bank account, opened in 1948, that is sitting around with $263, that no one has touched since, but they can’t just close the account and spend the cash on an office Nespresso maker.
Worse still, it technically costs the bank money to keep accounts open. Whether it be through constantly checking the account for activity, attempting to contact the owner, or just the added hassle of an extra $263 liability on the balance sheet that is causing one pedantic accountant to pull her hair out. The banks don’t want to deal with such a piddly small amount, when they don’t even know if the owner is alive.
If you think this is bad, in some states of America, the excess balance left on partially claimed gift cards, can and will be escheated, so there is probably 74c in an account somewhere that you own from an old blockbuster card you lost between the couch cushions.
Eventually, when it seems like an account has been abandoned, the bank will escheat the funds to the government for safekeeping. There, the government will hold onto them (putting the money into The Commonwealth of Australia Consolidated Revenue Fund… if you’re Australian) letting the bank get rid of their balance problem. There is roughly $2 billion of funds that are unclaimed, waiting for their owners to pick them up.
Most bank accounts that have been inactive for more than 7 years escheat the funds to the government, though some special accounts, like your old DollarMite account, aren’t subject to this rule. So, there is a non 0% chance that you or a close family member have one of these accounts that you’re unaware of. That is, assuming you and your family are 8 years old or older, and occasionally forget things... Where are your car keys right now?
This money isn’t the governments. They are just holding it for you. You can claim it at any time. Which brings us to the click baiting title. Go to this government website: Find unclaimed money - Moneysmart.gov.au.
Search your own name and you can check if there are any old accounts that you may have forgotten to close that have funds in them.
As part of researching this topic I did this and found an account that my uncle had lost in the confusion of changing banks/getting a mortgage, worth $3,000.
4 minutes 30 seconds to read this, 17 seconds to type in your own name. This is probably, the only article online that isn’t clearly a scam. That must be worth subscribing and a share, right?
