(Part 1 of 2)

In May 2007, IL State Treasurer State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias announced that the state's "Cash Dash" abandoned asset program is holding nearly 1.4 Billion dollars in Illinois unclaimed money. The only thing standing between the cash and its true owners is the knowledge that it's out there waiting to be claimed and the ability to track it down.

Sadly beyond just IL, state treasury departments across the country keep on taking in more unclaimed funds each year than they hand back to the citizens. Due to the fact that everyone believes in the old "if it's too good to be true" saying, the majority of people refuse to believe that there are really tens of billions of dollars waiting to be claimed across the country. Even for the handful who have come to accept the truth about unclaimed properties, the best way to locate these monies eludes them most of the time.

The Prairie is State is one of just a few states that holds over a billion dollars on its own, and that means that if you're a resident of IL then you have even greater odds of tracking down a claim in your name, especially when you factor in that the state has just under 13 million people and there are more than 10 million names on the state's IL database.

Even though there are many more, IL names the following as the most common types of forgotten funds: credit balances, customer deposits or overpayments, safe deposit box contents, money orders, refunds, paid-up life insurance policies, travelers checks, unpaid wages or commissions, abandoned savings and checking accounts, bonds, stock, un-cashed dividends, mutual funds. Anyone who has had or knows someone who may have had one of these types of accounts at one time or another is encouraged to search regularly.

(to be continued)

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