New website helps track down lost retirement savings

INDIANAPOLIS — Money might be out there waiting for you to claim it. 

The Retirement Savings Lost and Found Database, created through the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022, is a new tool that can help you search for funds.

It serves as a centralized location to track down lost or forgotten benefits and information on where it is located. 

This site is for people who worked for a private sector employer or were a member of a union that sponsored a retirement plan. 

The website can help you find retirement plans including:

• Defined-benefit pension plans: These guarantee a lifetime monthly payment, such as an annuity, or a lump-sum payment at retirement.
• Defined-contribution plans: These include plans like 401Ks, which are primarily funded by employees and grow during their working years.

Retirement plans with a government entity or religious organization are excluded from the dataset. It also excludes individual retirement accounts and health savings accounts.

To check for money, you need to confirm your identity using your Social Security number, a mobile device, date of birth, photos of your driver’s license and take a real-time selfie. 

Read the photo directions carefully. Taking a photo of your license on a light surface instead of a dark surface or wearing glasses in your selfie could stall the process.

If your search pulls results, it will give you details including the plan name, employee identification number, amount and reported year.

The reported year is worth noting because you may have rolled those funds over between the posted date and now. 

If you want to skip the site and search on your own, Sam Taube with NerdWallet suggests using your resume as a checklist to look for former employers. 

He also said you can look at old W-2s.

“They’re going to include information about how much you deferred from your paycheck to add to something like a 401(k),” Taube said. 

Often, money falls through the cracks because the process to transfer it can be involved.

“We’re not great at teaching people how to do this sort of thing, and so understandably, a lot of people just don’t bother,” Taube added.