One out of four people in South Dakota have extra money, and don’t even know it.
The State Treasurer’s office is trying to get more people to claim their property, with new advertisements. Find out where this money comes from and how to get it back.
The commercials have been all over KELOLAND TV lately. There’s a reason for this push.
“There’s over $600 million in unclaimed funds at this time, and we thought it was important to ensure we were getting the message out to folks,” said Josh Haeder, SD State Treasurer.
Unclaimed Property is money the state owes residents for any number of reasons.
“It can be from about anything. It can be from a safety deposit box. It can be from stocks, bonds, dividends. It can be really interesting things. We have here some silver and some gold from the Homestake Mine,” said Haeder.
This unclaimed property surplus is nothing new. However, the amount is growing each year.
“Go back say 10 years ago, you would see that we have an average of $10 million a year of unclaimed property coming in. If you fast-forward to today, we have about $70 million coming in. And that’s really due to increased banking, financial sector activity in South Dakota,” said Haeder.
So, what happens if you don’t claim these funds?
“In South Dakota, it stays here perpetually forever. So somebody could claim it 100 years from now. That would be a lot of paper work of course! But what is not utilized then goes to the General Fund,” said Haeder.
Claiming your money is pretty simple. Just go to the unclaimed cash website and fill out the form.
