Money Match and Unclaimed Property, Episode 240 with Chick2Chick - PennWatch

Who wouldn’t want a check to appear in the mail from the state! You may be owed money and soon you may not even have to claim it thanks to recent changes to the Unclaimed Property Program. PA Treasurer Stacy Garrity joins Chick2Chick to “chirp” about “Money Match and Unclaimed Property.”

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TRANSCRIPT: You know, there’s nothing better than finding out you are owed money from the state’s unclaimed property program. Right. And thanks to recent changes in some cases, you won’t even have to make a claim. You’re going to get that money automatically. And this is check to check.

unclaimed property program. And about a year ago my brother was on the air and he’s like, hey, your name is on there. You got some money coming to you. And I was like, okay, that’s cool. So I went on the website and I did have to fill out some forms and lo and behold, I got a nice little check in the mail.

I didn’t even know you like you don’t. Yeah, I know, I’m I’m in search of that, too. Who doesn’t want extra money that’s floating out there? Well, today we’re going to learn exactly how that is happening. PA Treasurer Stacey Garrity joins us today. Let’s start off with just talking about what exactly the unclaimed property is. Yes, absolutely.

So unclaimed property can be things like, can be things like cash checks, rebates, you know, bank accounts. It could be an insurance policy. And we also have tangible items that we get mainly from abandoned safe deposit boxes. And then there’s been and safe deposit boxes are things like jewelry, collectibles. Could be the military decorations. And believe it or not, the state has $4.5 billion.

Yes, billion with a B as I claim property. And I’m always encouraging everybody to go in that look and claim it because, you know, it’s not the state’s money. It belongs to the hardworking Pennsylvanians and earned it. It blows my mind that somebody has a paycheck and they forgot to cut you. Yeah. Dorothy, I playing in my case, you mentioned a rebate program.

There was a program going on where I earned rewards for purchasing different products, and it added up for my son’s college. Yeah. And so I didn’t even know that I was supposed to go in there and cash it. It wasn’t a lot, but hey, it was free money. I’ll take it. The average Pennsylvanian. How much money do they have owed to them that they might not even know about?

So one out of ten Pennsylvanians has unclaimed property, and the average claim is right around $1,600. And, you know, in today’s inflationary environment, when it’s so expensive to get groceries, to fill up your tank with gas, you know, a little bit of money can really help families that might be struggling. Okay, treasurer, I’m super nosy. So now I need to know I want I want the secrets about.

I want to know what’s in the vaults. What kinds of things could people expect? Okay, inside our vault, which, fun fact is the largest word involved in the nation, was built in 1939 with 400 tons of steel. And that sector alone is 60 tons. But once you get behind that front door, we have, military decorations from every branch of service, from every major conflict.

I’ll tell you about a couple of really neat items we have. So we have a big B necklace. So it’s three inches by 3.5in. Diamond encrusted. And that came to us from a Philadelphia police department, so very blingy. We have a $500 William McKinley bill. And people say, is that real? And I said, yes, but we don’t, you know, but it’s worth a lot more than $500, obviously.

And we recently got an electric guitar signed by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. And, we have a couple of chunks of silver that came to us from a bank, in the Philadelphia area as well. So all kinds of items. You also have a lot of military metals that I know you have returned to either these veterans or their families.

Talk to us. What is that like when you return something so valuable and so precious to these families? Well, since I am a veteran, so I served 30 years in the Army. Getting these medals back to the veterans or their families is really near and dear to my heart. And so since taking office, we’ve really made this a priority because I say out of all of the items in the vault, those are what is priceless.

And so, so far, we’ve returned 434, including 11 Purple Hearts and three Bronze Stars. And I’ll tell you, one of my favorite returns was to the family of a World War two private, Frank Musto and Westmoreland County, and, his family had a shadow box of his uniform, all his decorations. And he was wounded in France.

So he had a Purple Heart. But we had the Bronze Star because one of his sons, he had nine kids, but one of his sons, who passed away in this Bronze Star, was in the safe deposit box. And the banks, for whatever reason, didn’t let the family know what was in that safe deposit box. So we hunted them down, found them, and we did an in-person return and at a local VFW in lower borough.

And, they were delighted. And it was really a moving ceremony, and they enjoyed it so much that they came and toured the vault a couple months later. That’s awesome. I can’t imagine what that really meant to the family. That just goes beyond and unclaimed property, and that’s just really heartfelt. So I want to talk about, recent bill, legislature.

That was the Money Match program. So what’s going on with Money Match? Yes. I am so excited about Pennsylvania Money match. So Money match will allow us to proactively return up to $500, to single owners. So it has to be a relatively easy claim, but, money match passed unanimously, which is something almost unheard of. And so it actually eliminates red tape in government, something, again, almost unheard of.

And so, the the official start up date is the middle of January, but we’re we’re getting ready right now. So once January hits, we’re going to send out letters, to let people know that, they have money and then if the letters are returned to us and we basically verify the address and we’ll send out a check, there’s first checks to go out, in February.

So super excited about that. So just to be clear, like in my instance, I had to go on the website. I had to see that my name was there. And then I filled out the information with money match. You were going to contact me, for instance, or you’re going to contact Kari, for instance, to let her know that’s how it’s different.

So instead of us searching it, you’re going to find us. Is that correct? Exactly. So right now we do all kinds of things to try and get people their money back. So we advertise in newspapers, we go to fairs, we go to legislative events, senior expos, you name it. I did an episode with Good Morning America, just this past week.

Show me the money. So we do a lot of things, but there’s still so many people that just don’t believe that they have unclaimed property. We can’t get them to search it. Many times they think it’s a scam. So this will allow me to proactively contact, the person as long as, they’re alive and a single owner and less than $500.

Let them know that they have unclaimed property and then turn around and send a check out. So, cannot wait until January to get here. So what is the significance of the $500? Because you mentioned earlier that the average Pennsylvanian is owed 1600. So why do we have to go to 500? Why not? Why can’t we do the 1600?

Well, there is a great question for us. So after we get going with this, I’m going to ask the General Assembly to raise it to $5,000, which is what I had first suggested. 14 other states I want to mention do this, and they do so many where it ranges from $500 all the way up to $10,000. So we already know that other states are doing it successfully.

And so we can’t wait to be number 15. You know, what do you think it means to Pennsylvanians. You know that that there is something of theirs. The state’s not just going to hold on to it. I’m feeling like, you know, they’re they might be just really surprised that the people really care about the constituents. Why do you think that this means to Pennsylvanians having something like this?

It’s really a feel good measure. It really is. Well, it really is. And you know what? We get so much, money sent to us every year from financial institutions. So the last two years we got over $400 million a year. And while it’s great to get that money, I would rather not get it in the first place.

So this will allow us to, you know, really get money back to families. And I’m sure in a lot of cases that they’re struggling, like I mentioned earlier, just with, you know, the high cost of everything, it’s just through the roof. So I think this will go a long ways to help, to help families out. I think something that, the folks at home need to understand, too, is that this is not a once and done kind of thing.

I might have money today. I check it, I claim it and think, okay, I’m done. But then next year there could be more money there. Why does that happen? And why is that so important that people understand this is not a once and done type thing, right? Because after three years of dormancy, financial institutions and other businesses are required to send it to the state.

And that’s why I tell people at least check once a year, because you never know. You know, when an uncashed checker rebate or something is going to make its way to Treasury, I’m still dumbstruck that there’s just money floating out there. I can’t, I really am. So I guess the question is, how do you prevent that from from happening to begin with?

That is a great question, Kerry. And so what I tell people is make sure that you check in with your bank at least every three years, one year, every year would be better, but at least every three years, if you have any change of address, any changes, make sure you communicate with your financial institution and, and make sure you have a list of all your accounts and where they’re at.

So in case you know, something happens, a trusted family member knows. Well, and you bring up another interesting point. A friend of mine, found out that her mother, who had passed away, had money sitting there in an account. How do you deal with that? Say your mother or a parent or somebody passes away and that money was there.

You don’t even know that it’s there. How does. It’s like someone like me. How would I go about claiming that? Because the money’s not really in my name. It was in my mother’s name or in my father’s name. State or something. How do you deal with that kind of stuff? Oh, we get that back to the family members, for sure, but it’s a little bit more complicated.

So this would be part of money match. But what would we have to like? You know, for instance, see who the executor was? You know, get the death certificate sometimes do an attestation, you know, different family members, but, we, want the person through the process. We do a lot of hand-holding if they need it.

So it is a little bit more complicated, but it’s only. Yeah, you’re going to get them eventually. They’re going to get their money. Yeah, we’re going to get it because the process takes a lot. And people are like, eventually you’ll get love, all right? I just feels like it’ll be the next year. But so you know what? Realistically, how long is the process?

Okay. So it varies. But if it’s an easy claim it could be two weeks. If it’s a claim that’s a little bit more tricky then, our backlog is like four months or so. So, so, so not not super long. Yeah. No. And then sometimes if they make the claim and we require information, we’ll send an email saying, hey, we need this, this document or you know, that document.

And so that could add a little bit of time to it as well. But we really have tried to really reduce our lead time. Yeah I can check in two weeks. And that’s that’s great. I don’t feel like nothing runs that fast in government. That’s why I was considering I didn’t even know that money people want this money out the door.

I want this stuff out there now. I want to thank my brother like, yeah, he’s going to have to look for me now. So again, this is all going to, this new program, Money Match is going to start in January. And as you mentioned, is for $500 in less, or less. Now, in the meantime, for folks who want to find out if they have any money, owed to them, and for those individuals who might have more than $500, where would you go?

What’s the website? How do people find out what’s the process? It is very simple. All you do is go to treasury.gov smoke, claim property and just pop your name in. If it’s a common name, you can put your first name in, you can put in your address, you can put in your zip code. And it’s very easy.

You can also search for family and friends and let them know if they have something awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much, treasure. This has been a lot of great information. And when we’re done, I’m going to go see what is Otani. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Thanks for having me here for a secret. Thank you

Again, money match is going to start in January. If you have money coming to you, if it’s $500 or less, the state’s going to contact you. You don’t have to do anything. But in the meantime, and if it’s over $500, come on that website check, put your name in it.

Really, it took no time for me and I got money. Hey, thanks to my brother who like a billion. There’s billions out there with a B like that big bling she said that was found. Well, we loved having her on the podcast today and we love that you were here joining us. Do us a favor, head over to our YouTube channel and like and subscribe to.

We’re back to chirp about another topic.