cleaning house

This time every year I go through a process of financial house cleaning... reconciling statements, double-checking insurance policies, logging into every single account to check for any unusual activity, and closing the books on the apartment. It's usually pretty uneventful, sometimes I find a credit card that tried to sneak an annual fee past me or that we made an extra mortgage or credit card payment at one point, but this year has been a little different. I've actually "found" quite a bit of money.

1. I received an annual statement for a savings account I didn't even realize we had. I almost tossed it because I assumed it was junk mail, but luckily I opened it up to a pleasant surprise. Just over $500 sitting in an account, waiting for me to put it to good use. I just have to send a fax to the bank telling them to close the account and mail me a check!

2. A credit card that we no longer use apparently had a $611 credit on it. I had no idea, I'm still not quite sure where we went wrong paying it, but I called to get the credit sent to us and the card closed. The credit card company gave me the run-around a bit, they didn't want to cut a check (claiming "federal regulations"), but they did.

3. I was going over our insurance policies and noticed we have been getting double-billed for one of them for a few months. I called the company this morning and we now have a $276 credit AND our monthly bill is going down $55.

Those three things should be enough to motivate anyone to do a little bit of financial clean-up. I'm still a little shocked at how sloppy I was last year. I'm sure it was a combination of having a toddler, being pregnant, and working an obscene number of hours. I'd love to hear stories of other people's "found" money!