I was just watching a brief segment on Dateline NBC on how there are literally millions of dollars in unclaimed funds waiting to be claimed by its rightful owners as they were being held under state treasury. It was amazing to see the type of heirlooms that remain unclaimed.

The most interesting story in the segment I thought was how there was a person who worked for the company Lowes for 14 years and held a fairly high job position as a regional supervisor. Unfortunately, he was unexpectedly forced to quit due to post traumatic stress from being involved in the Vietnam war when he was younger. During this time, he received company benefits from Lowes which gave its employees company shares and this had been sitting in a state treasury for years. It wasn’t until 25 years later that it was brought to his attention that he owned 14,480 shares of the company. Once he claimed it from the state treasury, he discovered that it was now worth about $950,000.

This sure makes me wonder if there is some type of heirloom or lost funds out there that I am unaware of for myself as I never really thought about anything like this before. This is for US residents, but apparently the website missingmoney.org is a great place for people who are interested in seeing if there are any unclaimed funds and properties for them. Maybe I’ll be able to bump into some sites for people in other countries that deal with something similar in the future.

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Today I decided to look at my credit score and profile as recently I have had an unfortunate incident that involved identity theft. Just to make sure that there has been no form of accounts that have been opened with my information, looking at your credit profile is usually a great way to do so as having bad accounts under your name can affect your credit history. Upon review, fortunately no harm was done as all of precautions that I have taken before appears to have helped to keep others from successfully using my information to open accounts.

After that, I decided to also look at my credit score just to see how all the years of my personal financial management plans have faired for me. The credit bureau that I used to retrieve my information was Transunion Canada. Here is a snapshot of some information from the report I got in terms of how I currently rank:

These are some excerpts from the report summary:

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Background

Your credit score is created using a mathematical formula that measures data from your credit profile. Credit scores evaluate your payment behaviour, debt levels and credit history. Factors like income, race and gender are not measured in the scoring process. The credit scoring system is used by lenders, insurers, landlords, employers, utility companies and even judges to evaluate your credit behaviour. Having a high credit score will help you receive the best rates on new credit and loans.

Summary

Congratulations! You have a very high credit score and should be able to receive the best rates on new credit and loans. Your credit score indicates that you have used credit responsibly and have done an excellent job of managing your debts. Lenders will use your credit score along with income, employment and debt information to determine your interest rates. Your credit score may be able to increase further but improvement will probably not change the rates you are offered.
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So judging by this report, it seems like I am doing the right things to establish a very good credit score. I thought this was also a good picture summary on how others see you in terms of being able to pay your accounts on time:

While this report says that my score is 806 out of 900 which currently makes me 75.86% higher than the rest of the Canadian population, which most people would be satisfied with, ironically looking at this number makes me want to get it higher even though as mentioned in the summary that getting it higher probably won’t change the type of rates that I would receive. I guess it’s almost like running a business where you want to maximize results for your efforts or maybe it’s just that competitiveness that I have knowing that there are about 24.14% of other Canadians out there who are doing something different to make it higher which makes me want to learn from it to grow even further.

For anyone who hasn’t done it before, I would recommend reviewing your credit score and profile as it will give you a good snapshot on your personal habits in handling credit and to correct any possible errors in your credit profile.

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