From time to time we find ourselves needing (or wanting) a little more money. In addition to working (a sure way to find money), I have found additional ways to find money.

Over the past month I have found money in the following four places:

Unclaimed Property:

I recently saw a story on unclaimed property that was being held by the state. The Unclaimed Property office in Florida maintains a website (like many states) to reunite unclaimed property and money with their rightful owners. These items can be utility deposits, dormant accounts at financial institutions, and miscellaneous items from safe deposit boxes. Currently, in Florida, there is over $1,000,000,000 (yes, Billion!) in unclaimed property and accounts that they are maintaining custody of while waiting for the rightful owner to claim it. While I did not find any items for myself, a quick search did locate items belonging to two close relatives. Many states have these types of registries, just search for “Unclaimed Property” and your state using your favorite search engine.

Budget Leaks:

By far, this is one of the biggest areas I see where improvements can be made when I am working with people on their finances. If you are not currently using a monthly, written budget, you really owe it to yourself to use the forms provided on the Resources Page and read You, Inc. These two links will assist you with finding money by identifying areas where spending is out of control and areas where you can eliminate convenience spending all together. A budget, when properly done, will tell your money where to go – not where it went. I continue to save money based on previous actions I took on Health Care Expenses, and Food.

Sell Stuff:

Yes, I know – this sounds simple and it is. The problem is that after a year or so of selling your stuff, you need to do it again. With the recent drop of the price of gold I decided to look again around my house to see if there was any gold or silver that I had missed last year when I was trying to find money. The few items I found were worth over $1,000 for my scrap gold. Seriously, it was not that much jewelry, actually thought it would be worth about $200 – $300, not $1,000! We also when through other items in our home and found children’s clothes, toys, furniture and hobby supplies to sell that brought in another $500. Gold Selling Tip: I do have a warning, be sure to get quotes from 2-3 stores before selling your gold. I received two lower offers before settling on the last offer I received. The lowest offer was $60 less than what I accepted.

Side Jobs:

This is another way I found extra money. I found three mystery shopping companies and applied for mystery shopper jobs. While these are sometimes as simple as taking a couple of pictures of items within a store, they can be as involved as interacting with store employees using specific scripts to audit employee performance. The amount of compensation varies with each side job but I have been able to earn over $300 in the past month.

If you need to find money, start by looking at these four areas. I am still surprised that I have found over $1,800 using the ways listed above.

Did you find some money using the methods above? Do you have another suggestion on where to find money? Share a comment below.

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