Money You've Forgotten About, and How to Find It in an Evening

Whatever happened to the savings account from your first job, or the pension from the place you worked for eight months?

Probably nothing, because money doesn't vanish when you forget it. Neither do the Premium Bonds a grandparent bought, or the Child Trust Fund you never knew existed.

The money sits with the bank or company that holds it, or gets passed to an official scheme, and then it waits for you to ask.

The nineteen-year-old who opened that account would be baffled you still haven't checked.

Every search here is free and official, so why does almost nobody run them? They're fiddly, and you have to remember your own life. AI is good at helping with that part. Most people who look find nothing, or a small amount.

Knowing still beats wondering.

One evening is enough. Let the AI build the plan while you do the clicking, because the official sites ask for details you should never paste into a chatbot.

Write down your past

Start with a note, and in it list roughly these things.

• Employers you've had, with rough years
• Every bank or building society you've ever had an account with
• Your adult addresses, all of them
• Any previous names you've used
• Whether you were born between September 2002 and January 2011, or have a child who was (those are the dates for Child Trust Funds)
• Anything a relative might have put in your name, such as Premium Bonds, a savings account or shares

Leave out account numbers, your National Insurance number and your date of birth, because the AI doesn't need them to plan the search.

Ask for a search plan

Once you've got the list, paste it into ChatGPT or Claude with web search turned on, along with this prompt.

Here's a rough list of my employers, banks and addresses in the UK. Work out every official, free service I should check for money I might have forgotten. That includes lost bank and savings accounts, old pensions, Premium Bonds and NS&I prizes, Child Trust Funds, lost shares and investments, and insurance policies. For each service, give me the official site's link, what I'll need to hand before I start, and which items on my list it applies to. Flag any service that charges a fee or isn't run by the government, a regulator or an industry body, and tell me to skip it.

Check the plan against the official list

Can you trust the links the AI gives you? Not blindly, because an AI can get a link wrong, or name a service that's changed. So compare its list with the one below, and before typing into any site that isn't listed here, check who runs it.

All of these were free when checked in October 2026, but run a quick search to confirm nothing's moved.

Run the searches yourself

Keep this part for yourself. The sites will ask for your National Insurance number, date of birth and old addresses. Type those on the site itself, with the padlock showing in the address bar, and never into the chat.

Most searches take two or three minutes. Answers arrive by post or email over a few weeks, so set a reminder.

If you get stuck on a form, describe the question to the AI in plain words. For example, "it's asking for a scheme name and I only know the employer."

AI is good at turning form language into plain English, but don't let the AI fill the form in.

None of these searches will find a cash tin in a late relative's loft, because they only find what's registered. Worst case, you've tidied up your past.

Best case, there's a cheque in the post.

Hang up on anyone who rings about it

Nobody official will phone to say they've found your money. If someone rings, or asks for a fee to release your money, put the phone down. The real services wait for you to come to them.

When the forms are in, chase the money people owe you.

Source, MoneySavingExpert, reclaim lost assets for free