Mary Pitman: Finding Missing Money

Mary Pitman joins Coach Pete to explain unclaimed property and how forgotten accounts and payments can become missing money. This April 2012 interview explores her work and The Little Book of Missing Money. Call 800-661-7383 or text PLAN to 600-700. Transcript Automatically transcribed from this episode; timestamps are approximate. 00:00 And welcome back in, folks. Of course, this is the Financial Safari, and today we have a very special guest. Her name is Mary Pittman, and she's written a book called The Missing Money Lady. You can find her at thelittlebookofmissingmoney.com. Now, Mary, what is finding money? What do you do, and how do you do it? Missing money is unclaimed property. Anyway, each state has laws about turning money that is forgotten over to the state so that they can act as the holder of it and help protect it and keep it for you until you know to look there for it. It can be forgotten savings accounts, refunds, rebates, utility deposits, escrow deposits, life insurance money, safe deposit box contents, but the high dollar amounts tend to be stocks. 00:54 So people lose money or just forget about it? They forget about it. The thing that's required, if it's not a case of just they didn't have the correct address, say in the case of a utility deposit that they're trying to refund, is accounts have to have customer-initiated activity on them at least, in most cases, once every three years. The states are going from five years down to three for their dormancy period. The dormancy period is the time from the last activity to the present moment. And if it's, like I said, in most cases, it's going to three years. So in three years, if you haven't had any contact with your account, and let's say it's a savings account, you may think, well, it's earning interest, so that's activity. 01:41 No, it's not customer-initiated activity. And that's what they base it by, be it a savings account or stocks. In fact, in Delaware, there was just news that Delaware doesn't care if you have the correct address for the person. If they have a dividend reinvestment plan and it's working and it's just kind of on autopilot and their dividends are coming directly to them, it doesn't matter. If there hasn't been owner-initiated activity, they require that the holder of the money turn the money over to the state. So, but I do dividend reinvestment programs myself. So, I mean, that's not fair, is it, to turn the money and make it? Absolutely, it's not fair. You are absolutely right, Coach Pete. 02:29 Well, Mary, why would they do that? I mean, is that a money grab or what's going on here? Absolutely, because the states are using the interest off of that money. And in some cases, they're even floating alone to themselves. Nevada, I think it was last year or the year before, took $10 million out of the unclaimed property fund to help bring new business to Nevada. So, they're treating it almost like the Social Security slush fund. They're robbing Peter to pay Paul, in other words. Absolutely. Well. Louisiana used it to back bonds for roads. Now, you've been featured on Good Morning America and America's Money Class with Susie Orman and many other shows, but you've helped, actually, you helped Susie Orman find money. You've helped Justin Timberlake, Whoopi Goldberg, Johnny Depp, and other celebrities. Even our producer, Rob, said that you were able to find some money for him. 03:18 When I get a new name, that's the first thing I do is look him up. And I was actually the first person to ever tell Susie about missing money. She had never heard of it. And that was in March of 2009. Now, you've got some valuable search tips and secrets you won't find anywhere else. What are some of the tips the general public can utilize right now to see if they are maybe being or some of their money is being held hostage right now and they don't even know about it? Okay. The basic place to search is go to unclaimed.org. And that is .org, not .com. .com will charge you, so do not go there. You should never pay for an online search. From there, you can click on any state you've ever lived in. And one of my search tips that gets just huge results is if you're looking up a deceased family member, where it asks for the last name, enter estate of, the estate of, or just EST of. 04:14 In California, that brings up over 18,500 listings. In New York, it's over 3,700. Maryland, it's over 400. Florida, it's about 500. So it's not what you're looking for. It's how you're looking, in other words. Absolutely. There's so many ways. I've had time to play with this in between patients. If I work as a nurse in the recovery room and in the middle of the night and on the weekend, when I'm waiting for patients to come out and there's nothing to do, I would play on the site. And the more bizarre I tried to think of a listing, and I'd think, oh, there's no way that would be there. It was. Another one is if you have a professional designation, such as MD or DDS or DO, any of those, you can put just that under the last name. 05:08 And it will pull up listings. Well, working as a nurse, I'm sure you've worked on the third shift before, late night, and you've seen the TV shows that come on. Many of them are scams, and some of them do tell you that they'll help you find lost money. So let's bust the top three missing money myths. The top three are it's a scam. It isn't. But you need to know how to look. And like I said, go to unclaimed.org and click on any state you've ever lived in. In addition, on that site, up at the top, there's a link that most people overlook. It says other places to search. And that will bring up lots of listings for you. Another myth is that you can't – I don't have any money there. There's $33 billion nationwide. 05:56 It belongs to somebody. You have nothing to lose by looking. Rob couldn't believe that he found money. Rob, where did your money come from, or where did she find it? She found it at an old job I worked at, and I probably haven't worked there now in about 10 years. Oh, that's amazing. It's amazing. So, well, what are some of the other ways to basically keep your money from going to the state? Oh, that's my favorite topic. The number one thing you can do is keep in contact with your state – with your accounts. For example, a savings account, you can take $5 out, put $5 in the same day, just some type of activity. And I advocate doing it once a year because if you try to do it once every three years or once every five, you don't know if the dormancy period is going to change in your state. 06:42 Just do it once a year on your birthday. It's your gift to yourself to keep your money. This also applies to stocks. You can update your beneficiary information, especially their contact information. In some cases, it may be that the beneficiary has died. In other cases, it may be an ex-spouse. So take a look at that policy now and just call and make sure that they have the current contact information. Make sure you get your final paycheck. Rob is a great case. Yeah, get your final paycheck, Rob. Nobody intentionally leaves a check. But if the last day that you work is the first day of the new pay period, then you have two checks coming, not just one. Find out from the employer, do you pick it up or are they going to send it to you? Change your address when you move. This includes – and this is one that's often forgotten. 07:30 When you change your address with your employer, whether you've left or even if you're staying at the same job, also make sure that you change it with the 401k plan administrator and the employer-provided benefit people, such as health, dental, vision, insurance, in case there's any refunds for you. It's always good to get refunds. Make a list of all of your assets and make sure somebody knows where to find it. And don't forget your digital assets. And by digital assets, I mean things like an iTunes account, an eBay store, that type of thing. Your family needs your login information and your password. There's no limit of stories of people who have had a loved one die, and then they try to get access to that. 08:18 And even though they have a death certificate, it's very hard to get the access. And this is especially important if you own domain names. Domain names, Mark Ostrovsky, the author of Get Rich Quick, calls it the real estate of the Internet, especially if your domain name is for an established business. If you can't log on to access it, to renew it, you may lose it. Yeah, and you're building equity with those domain names. Many people are, so you don't want to lose them after all these years of holding, correct? Right, absolutely. Now, here's one final topic I wanted to mention to you, and I don't know if this falls within your realm or not, but what if somebody buys life insurance or an annuity and they pass away, and they don't tell anybody in the family that they did it and they pass away? 09:04 How does someone go about claiming those kind of funds? I am so glad you brought that up. I can't even tell you. There's been a big investigation. It started with California. What they found was that the life insurance companies were using the Social Security Death Index to find annuitants that they owed money to, that they were making monthly payments to. They were using the Social Security Death Index to determine when they died and they could stop making payments. However, they were not using the very same death index to determine when somebody died and they needed to make a life insurance payout. So I know MetLife and Prudential have paid heavy fines, 09:50 and I think that's one of the reasons why California has such a massive amount of listings under the estate of, is that they're just getting hit with all of these new life insurance claims. There's no centralized database to search for a life insurance policy. So the only thing you can do is you can check your loved one's checking account record and see if there was any record of any payments being made, or their income tax return and see if there's any 1099 interest forms from a life insurance company, see if there's a card for an insurance agent. Other than that, you pretty much have to go state by state. There are a couple of companies that will do it for you for a fee. 10:38 Well, I'll tell you what I advise. I advise that someone, when they buy life insurance, which is a good investment a lot of times, especially for your family and annuities, to make sure that the family members get introduced to the agent or advisor who put them in there. That way there's a chain of command, in other words. Absolutely. Absolutely. And at least make sure the beneficiary knows, because family politics being what they are, sometimes a family member who knows may not tell you if you're the other family member, and they don't think you should have gotten that money. You're right. You're right. These are great topics. We'd love to have you on again. I'd love to. Folks, this was Mary Pittman, and she is a specialist in finding lost money. And folks, what's your website, Mary? The Little Book of MissingMoney.com. My book is available in paperback, in all the e-book formats, and for download from my website. 11:27 Mary, thanks for your time today. Thanks so much. I appreciate it. I hope it was helpful. It sure was. And folks, we'll be right back after this. We'll be right back. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.