Lost and Found: How about $1.65 trillion in Unclaimed Retirement Account Assets
Unclaimed Retirement Account Assets: $1.65 trillion and counting.
Did you know Americans have over $1.65 trillion in unclaimed assets from former employer retirement plans?
"In an updated version of its 2021 whitepaper, “The True Cost of Forgotten 401(k) Accounts,” Capitalize found forgotten accounts have grown by 20% in the last two years. As of May 2023, there are an estimated 29.2 million forgotten or left-behind 401(k) accounts in the U.S., representing $1.65 trillion in assets."
How does this happen?
Simply put, people leave companies, relocate, and often fail to provide a forwarding address to their former employer. Upon leaving their previous employer, an employee may not have consolidated their old 401(k) retirement account into an IRA rollover account or transferred it to their new employer's retirement plan. This leads to an orphaned retirement account with the former employer.
Solution: Enter the U.S. Department of Labor Retirement Savings Lost and Found Database.
The U.S. Department of Labor has created a database to help determine if there are orphaned retirement accounts. In this database, you can check if you have any retirement plan assets remaining from a former employer.
Click this link to explore. https://lostandfound.dol.gov/
Please feel free to let us know if you need assistance with finding orphaned retirement assets or rolling those assets into a tax-qualified retirement plan, such as an IRA Rollover account. If you are in an office environment, feel free to share this article with your co-workers, as they may also have orphaned retirement accounts.
As always, thanks for reading.
Click here: I need help finding lost 401k plan accounts.