At last count, the U.S. Treasury’s Bureau of the Public Debt was holding 44.7 million matured, unredeemed savings bonds worth $16.3 billion dollars that the rightful owners have failed to cash in. One or more of those bonds could belong to your family.
Some definitions: ”Matured” means they have finished earning interest.”Unredeemed” means the owners haven’t cashed them in. When you consider that savings bonds take 20 to 40 years to mature, it’s easy to see how people could forget about them.
I’m sorry to say that finding your family’s unclaimed savings bonds isn’t as easy as it used to be. Until a few months ago you could go to the government’s cleverly named “Treasury Hunt” website and do a search right online. When I launched Easy Money that site was listed as “temporarily down for repairs.” I kept inquiring and checking back and guess what: Now there’s a notice saying that “Treasury Hunt” is no longer available.
Could it be that the government no longer wants to make it easy for YOU to claim YOUR money? After all we have a huge deficit and debt and it wouldn’t hurt the feds to have an extra $16 billion dollars lying around. If this pisses you off, I suggest you complain to your members of congress and senators.
Meanwhile, it IS still possible to find and claim your family’s lost savings bonds. It just takes a more old fashioned effort. To inquire about unclaimed savings bonds, you submit “Fiscal Service Form 1048, Claim for Lost, Stolen, or Destroyed United States Savings Bonds.” I will link you to the form from EasyMoneyShow.com/22.
The form asks for information like bond number, face amount and issue date, but if you don’t have those, I suggest you submit it anyway. The form ALSO asks for the name of the bond owner and their social security number, which is the only information you used to have to provide online. So I’m hoping that the Treasury Department will still be able to find missing bonds using that information.
This may sound like a hassle, but it’s worth it. I helped a Pennsylvania family search for their unclaimed savings bonds. First the Jerry Williams found more than $500 dollars worth of savings bonds in her own name. Then she found more listed for her husband. And then, while I was at their house they found still more savings bonds for her daughter. In all, this one family found about a thousand dollars worth of savings bonds.
I hope that encourages you to try filling out the form. And you should check back every couple of years. The Treasury Department adds another half million bonds to its database EVERY month as they mature!
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