I just finished listening to the Escheat show on NPR’s Planet money, and learned all about Escheat Law (process?)

Escheat is a process where seamingly “abandoned” properties is reported to the state for the owner to claim it–sort of a lost-and-found for the state residences.

I searched my name and found 70$ from an old savings account. That’s pretty cool.

I recommend everyone do this. Google “unclaimed property ” and skip the first ad-supported link or two.

More than money can be Echeated; personal proerty, lockboxes, stocks and bonds, pretty much anything that can be considered “abandoned”

The NPR story follows the unfortunate side of Escheat. TL:DR; a man bought an Amazon stock in the late 90s on ETrade and left it alone for 20 years. Because he didn’t log in it was Eceated in 2008, and the stock was sold at market value at that time, so the man who would’ve had $100k now has $8k in cash (a profit of $2k). Oy I can’t believe it.

Keep track of your accounts I guess?!

How I’m keeping track of my acconuts

• TrueBill is an app that keeps track of your subscriptons, you can also link most accounts. It’s pretty good, but I suspect it will go downhill in the next 5 years (the same way every multi-accounts managment app have since its Genisis with Mint).
• Financial Managers - Most of my accounts are managed by a Fiduciary. Having an actual team of qualified humans watching accounts is well worth the couple thousand dollars it costs.
• Manual checking is in my routine - I have a weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly routine, and checking on my accounts is the monthly one, so I don’t think any of my accounts is likely to be Escheated.

P.S. This is a “lifestream” post, where I just write for no particular audiance. I’ve found writting out thoughts to be extreamly powerful in my personal life, and I want to start snapshotting thoughts in time. I bet it will be interesting to look back on one day.