With the car needing repairs, we were looking for the funds to get it fixed. Fortunately, we like tax time around here and the federal and state refunds we're due will take care of most of the costs. But still looking to defer a little more of that bill, I finally decided to get some of my money back from the state of Ohio.
When I was in high school, my father, an independent business owner, made sure his kids had their own car insurance policies. He was afraid that we'd get in an accident and someone would try to sue to get at the assets of his company [true story: my brother Chris was in an accident with some Iranians, one of which sued him for making him impotent. I guess my dad knew what he was doing].
The one thing that sucked was that, as a sixteen year-old male, the insurance was expensive. Fortunately, dad took care of the gas because the premiums were steep. As I've come to realize now, every now and then you're insurance company will kick you back some money because the company did better than they thought. Apparently, when I was not yet an adult, that money never made it's way back to me and went into some State of Ohio fund. This was one of those many "unclaimed funds" you here about the government having.
I've known a few years about this cash, a couple hundred bucks, that I never got around to claiming. But when I came across the Missing Money website, I finally got the process rolling.
But let me tell you why those funds go unclaimed: because the government makes it ridiculously difficult for you to get at it. In addition to regular ID I had to get proof of my old address [from 15 years ago], a memo from my insurance company that I was indeed insured through them back then, and get a Notary to sign off on my assertion that the money is indeed mine. Fortunately our friend Sheryl is a Notary, so she helped there, and I'll pick up a letter from my insurance company tomorrow. I'll drop it in the mail and [maybe] have that cash in hand in a few months.
Add that to the IRS letter telling me that the IRS will send me money in a future letter, and I say that I loves me some bureaucracy.