How to Find Old 401(k) and Pension Accounts

The challenge will be finding that money and claiming it. If you’ve worked a dozen jobs and are now in your fifties and looking forward to retirement, there’s a good chance you’ll struggle to remember everywhere you worked. But how do you find old 401(k) and Pension Accounts?

You might remember carrying bags in a hotel one summer — but you might also struggle to remember the name of the hotel or when exactly you were there.

The good news is that you don’t have to try to remember every place you’ve ever worked and that might have given you pension payments.

Find Old 401(k) and Pension Accounts

Sites like Unclaimed.org help people and businesses find unclaimed property. Unclaimed.org is run by the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators.

You can conduct a free search using an official state program and find any old 401(k) and pension plans that you’ve paid into and forgotten.

It is worth being cautious here, though. Official state programs will help you find and claim your pension and retirement funds for free. The National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators can direct you to those state programs.

Professional hunters can also track down any funds for you in return for a fee, but you don’t really need them. The information is available for nothing, and it won’t take more than a few minutes to scan your state’s official program to discover whether you’ve got any hidden money.

If you start fishing emails out of your spam folder telling you that you’ve got several million dollars sitting in an account in Africa somewhere, give that a miss. That’s not yours, and you aren’t getting it.