Illinois Residents: Reclaim Your Money

(Disclosure: This post is sponsored but all thoughts are my own.)

Have you ever found money in a pocket of your coat, or the bottom of your purse, that you had forgotten was there? Isn’t that a great feeling?

Now imagine for a minute that it was $10, $100 or even $1,000! Wouldn’t that be amazing? There are hundreds of people every day that get that surprise when they discover money through the Illinois Treasurer’s I-Cash program. The program, founded in 1999, helps Illinois residents recover their unclaimed assets.

The state is currently safeguarding more than $2 billion in cash and 20 million shares of stock and mutual funds that need to be returned. These assets are transferred to the Treasury after banks, government agencies, and other companies become unable to return them to their rightful owners. The I-Cash website is a free and easy way for people to discover if they have cash or other assets to recover.

As soon as I heard about this program I looked up my last name in the database. I didn’t find anything but I did find some money that was a family member’s marked “accounts payable” and another family member had $100 from an insurance company that was owed to her. I then looked up my mom’s name and found she had $10 owed to her marked “Misc Intangible Property”.  When I told my mom she said she’d probably spend the money on a few of her favorite coffee drinks. (Hopefully she’d treat me to one, too!)

With more than 13 million names in the I-Cash database, one in four Illinois adults who search the website discover property to claim. The average claim is about $1000, while the highest claim was more than $8 million in 2012. $8 MILLION dollars to one person. Could you have hundreds or even thousands owed to you? You never know until you check!

CLICK HERE TO SEE IF YOU HAVE LOST MONEY!