How to find lost or forgotten pensions, 401(k)s, and retirement money

You changed jobs, maybe a few times, since you graduated and joined the rat race. Your company bolted the gates and went out of business. Or maybe, you put the memories of a toxic workplace that you left years ago far, far behind you.

And now, you cannot for the life of you figure out how to track down an unclaimed pension or 401(k) plan. It's a real trouble spot for many people now in their 60s or even younger.

Who do you even call if you think you had money in a 401(k) decades ago? Or if you thought you were covered by a pension?

One estimate indicates that about 29 million 401(k) accounts remained forgotten in 2023, amounting to nearly $1.65 trillion in unclaimed retirement benefits nationwide, according to a report by Capitalize, a platform that finds and manages transfers for savers who want to roll over old 401(k) assets into an IRA. Capitalize, which launched in 2020, said its analysis is based on data from the Internal Revenue Service, Department of Labor and Bureau of Labor Statistics, as well as academic research and information from policy experts.

Lost retirement money is such a big issue that a new federal Retirement Savings Lost and Found was required as part of the SECURE 2.0 act, which was signed into law by President Joe Biden in late 2022 as part of a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package.

The database was to be established by the end of December 2024 to enable retirement savers to search for the contact information of their plan administrator to claim the benefits they may be owed, if they've lost track of that information.

It's not an easy task to get all that data and deal with cybersecurity concerns.

Initially, key data was thought to be available from the Internal Revenue Service, but the IRS cited regulations relating to disclosure laws and said it would not supply information to the Labor Department for "communicating either directly with participants and beneficiaries about retirement plans that may still owe them retirement benefits or indirectly through the Retirement Savings Lost and Found online searchable database," according to an April notice by the Employee Benefits Security Administration.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration, according to a spokesperson in late October, is in the process of building the database and collecting data, in collaboration with the IRS and Treasury and the Social Security Administration, as well as through collecting information voluntarily from plan administrators or authorized recordkeepers.

Some options already exist for finding your missing 401(k)s or retirement plans. But you will need to do some digging and take various routes to find that missing money.

The first steps would include contacting your old employer and looking for old statements or old paperwork, which might offer some information on the plan. If a company is still in business, try to reach the plan administrator directly.

There are other steps you should take, as well.

What to do if you get a letter from the Social Security office

Sometimes, you'll get a notice from Social Security regarding potential private retirement benefit information — and you shouldn't ignore it.

When someone leaves an employer and they have a vested benefit, the employer is required to notify the Internal Revenue Service. IRS shares that information with the Social Security Administration.

When someone files for a Social Security benefit, Social Security will often issue a notice regarding the possibility that you are eligible to claim a private benefit, according to Joe Rivers, the regional director for the U.S. Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration Cincinnati regional office.

Often, the notice involves a traditional pension plan, but it could also involve a 401(k) plan. Or the person might have multiple plans for multiple employers and receive several notices.

The person would then call the Employee Benefits Security Administration for assistance to unravel how people can find or claim that money.

Sometimes, people have a work history with more than one employer and could have small amounts of money in two or three different plans that they might have forgotten.

All you're receiving here is a notice or a reminder that you may have a benefit, Rivers said. You might have a benefit to claim, or you might not.

Someone who claimed the 401(k) money when they left the company, for example, might not have more money to claim.

Or in some cases, someone gets promoted and goes from an hourly to a salaried plan after becoming a manager. It might be easy to overlook that money that was left in an hourly plan.

From fiscal year 2019 through June 25, the Employee Benefits Security Administration helped 759 people in Michigan who received such Social Security private benefit notices recover about $47.4 million. Nationwide, 3,315 people were helped to recover $186.9 million during in fiscal year 2024.

"There's a lot of money out there potentially that people haven't claimed or have forgotten," Rivers said.

Your retirement money may be in an 'abandoned plan'

The U.S. Department of Labor has an "abandoned plan search" program to find out if a retirement plan has been terminated after a business went bankrupt or merged. The program began in 2006.

The abandoned plan program can help people find out if a former employer now has a terminated plan that might provide them with benefits. In Michigan, for example, the Employee Benefits Securities Administration dealt with 148 such plans from fiscal year 2018 through Sept. 30, 2022, that resulted in about $7.9 million in benefits being paid out to workers.

A plan can end up being abandoned when the sponsoring employer no longer exists following a bankruptcy proceeding. Or the plan sponsor might have been jailed, died or fled the country.

Someone who runs into problems can call the Employee Benefits Securities Administration at 866-444-3272. The caller would be directed to a regional office for their particular state.

Or you can Google "Ask EBSA" to be taken directly to the Department of Labor web page. Or you can send a message to the EBSA through their website, askebsa.dol.gov, where you can get help navigating the system.

Rivers said sometimes the answers aren't clear cut, particularly after a string of mergers and acquisitions, but employees can be directed to the correct spot to track down a plan.

"We can oftentimes hook people up with the correct plan administrator," Rivers said. "Sometimes, the fact that we're involved helps get more information than say if John Q. Public called up some company. We don't typically take no for an answer. Or if we take no for an answer, we want you to prove it's no.

Sometimes, the answer is not one people want to hear.

Take the case of one woman who had left her job in 1992. Rivers said the woman remembered receiving some money, but she thought she was owed more money from a different plan at the same company. Ultimately, the Employee Benefits Securities Administration worked with her to figure out that she had already been paid. Her longtime accountant was able to track down that payment.

"She didn't get any more money," Rivers said, "but she got an answer. And that in itself is often times a success."

Thousands of Americans are searching for retirement cash

Keep in mind that it might be harder to track down retirement funds from industries that have greater turnover. Small employer plans can be more problematic, too, because they might not have the bandwidth to communicate with former employees when the company goes out of business.

"Small donut shop, the guy dies. His spouse takes over. She dies six months later," Rivers said. "All of a sudden, you've got an abandoned 401(k) plan. And it may be five or six people who can't get access to their account balance because there's no one who was the fiduciary living anymore."

Situations like that happen all the time, Rivers said, all over the country. Or one person working at a small company can be wearing multiple hats — doing the books and pitching in to unload trucks — triggering some gaps about retirement benefits when the person with all that knowledge leaves the company.

Read on:Born between 1965 and 1980? Generation X is next up for retirement. Are you in denial?

The Pension Rights Center, a nonprofit consumer organization, also offers resources on how to track down lost pensions.

The Pension Rights Center also works with people to help find lost pensions. See www.pensionrights.org or call 202-296-3776. You can also go to www.pensionhelp.org for information.

Unclaimed property search

Right now, no requirement exists that mandates that for retirement money or 401(k) providers report abandoned plans to different states. So you might find some unclaimed pension money through your state's unclaimed property database — or you might not.

This year, a group of members of Congress and state treasurers urged the Department of Labor to develop a "uniform, nationwide regulation that allows state unclaimed property programs to help reunite individuals with their lost retirement checks."

State treasurers and state officials who oversee unclaimed property programs want to establish what's called the States’ Unclaimed Retirement Clearing House program.

"As the number of retiring Americans continues to soar, so does the problem of uncashed retirement plan distributions," according to a letter sent by the National Association of State Treasurers in August to Julie Su, acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Labor.

"The amount of unclaimed retirement funds is estimated to be growing at a rate of over $100 million annually, and under the current regulations, those funds are unlikely to be reunited with the beneficiary.”

Backers of the change say regulatory ambiguity allows thousands of accounts to go unclaimed.

Save your paperwork

More:Reality bites: Is Generation X in denial about its own impending retirement?

As you're working, you want to create a special file for information on your pensions and 401(k) plans. Keep statements so that you might figure out how to track down money in retirement.

Keep letters from your company stating you earned a vested benefit from a defined benefit plan. Hold onto some pay stubs and W-2 forms. Keep a record of the name of your union and local number, if union membership was required for participation in the pension plan.

Remember details such as your approximate date of hire and date your employment ended.

How to search Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. database

We're hearing more about the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., as part of some key pension plan bailouts. The special financial assistance program was enacted as part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan of 2021 signed by President Joe Biden on March 11, 2021.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. approved a $23.6 million pension bailout on Oct. 23 for the Midwestern Teamsters Pension Plan, based in Oak Brook, Illinois, which covers 615 participants in the transportation industry. That pension was projected to become insolvent in 2032 without the boost.

When a bailout like that takes place, those who want to claim retirement benefits from these plans should still contact their specific plan administrators about their pension plan benefits.

The PBGC has a database to find unclaimed pension benefits online at www.pbgc.gov where you can start a search by entering your last name and the last four digits of your Social Security number. But the PBGC does not have information on individuals in multiemployer plans.

The PBGC also has tips on how to find unclaimed retirement benefits in general. If a company files for bankruptcy, you want to pay attention to whether the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. will become involved if the company had a pension plan.

Contact personal finance columnist Susan Tompor: stompor@freepress.com. Follow her on X (Twitter) @tompor.