10/31/2014 – On the Trail of Lost Money (The New York Times)

There are tens of billions of dollars sitting in the unclaimed property funds that states run, just waiting to be taken back by rightful owners who have lost track of various stock dividends, tax refunds, bank accounts and the like. Orphaned 401(k) balances are a big enough problem that the Department of Labor commissioned a report from experts in the retirement industry. They had trouble agreeing on who should even be classified as missing or lost in the first place. Employers are increasingly writing rules for their workplace retirement accounts that make it easier to push former employees’ accounts out of the plans altogether.

Read the full article at The New York Times.