Tracking down a lost U.S. savings bond has never been easy, but billions of dollars in missing paper savings bonds now appear trapped in more chaos as a new program, which is designed to make things simpler, painfully unfolds.
Plenty of millennials remember receiving savings bonds from Grandma in the 1980s and 1990s for birthday gifts and holidays. Maybe you do, too? Now, where did you put them?
Michigan residents alone have roughly $773 million sitting in lost or unredeemed U.S. Savings Bonds, based on a 2022 estimate reported by the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators.
Michigan ranks No. 8 on the list that tallies the estimated value of unredeemed, lost or missing savings bonds by state.
The No. 1 ranking goes to California at $3 billion; Texas follows at $2.1 billion; New York is next at $1.5 billion; Florida is at $1.4 billion and Illinois is No. 5 at $1 billion.
Yep, $773 million is a lot of dough. By a quirky comparison, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon made headlines earlier this year for pocketing $770 million in his total payout for 2025, which includes a combination of his salary, bonuses, dividends, stock grants and appreciation in his allotment of the bank’s shares.
Most Michiganders aren’t dealing with millions of dollars in lost savings bonds. These days, though, any extra found cash is welcome as bills keep going up.
Finding those bonds isn’t going to be easy, as one program called Treasury Hunt disappeared and another involving unclaimed property sites is having a hard time getting off the ground.
Bottom line: You need to file a paper form and you’ll need to wait — wait for it — nearly a year to get some answers.
What’s troubling is that savers tell me that they’ve run up against more confusion when it comes to tracking down those missing bonds in 2026.
The spot where you’d normally go to start a search for savings bonds — Treasury Hunt at TreasuryDirect.gov — no longer works. The tool quietly stopped being available nearly a year ago on Sept. 30, 2025.
If you go to Treasury Hunt now, you’re shocked to learn that “inquiries about unclaimed Treasury securities are now handled through individual states’ unclaimed property programs.”
Except they really aren’t.
The Secure 2.0 Act of 2022 specifically requires the U.S. Department of the Treasury to share information on certain matured, unredeemed savings bonds with states so that owners can locate those bonds. Yet a new system has not been put into place; talks continue to be ongoing well into 2026.
How it should work
The strategy for giving lost savings bonds a collaborative boost from state managed unclaimed property programs seems smart, but it is having a hard time getting off the ground. Worse yet, the shift is triggering some gaps.
In Michigan, savers theoretically should be able to tap into a new system to go to the Michigan Department of Treasury’s Unclaimed Property database to begin a search online for unredeemed U.S. savings bonds that stopped earning interest once they reached final maturity 30 years after the bond was issued.
But that’s not the case right now, according to Terry Stanton, who oversees Michigan’s Unclaimed Property Program.
Right now, no states currently have data sharing with the Department of Treasury Bureau of Fiscal Service in place that are publicly posting mature, unredeemed savings bonds on their unclaimed property sites.
Stanton told the Detroit Free Press that if Michigan received the list of unredeemed savings bonds — and there are no plans to do so at this time — only names would be displayed on the website. That’s based on U.S. Treasury guidance.
Any listing on an unclaimed property site could not imply that the property is related to a Treasury Security or U.S. Savings Bonds, again based on federal guidance, Stanton said.
Under the proposed process, the states will not be receiving the money associated with these unclaimed savings bonds.
Michigan Unclaimed Property would not see the value of bonds for individual owners or heirs of lost savings bonds with the proposed process, Stanton explained.
Stanton noted that the Michigan Unclaimed Property Program would have no access to the money in savings bonds and cannot answer questions regarding the U.S. Treasury’s claim process.
And, according to U.S. Treasury guidance, Stanton noted, “the state is not authorized to redeem, claim, or transact savings bonds on behalf of the U.S. Treasury, Fiscal Service, or the bondholder.”
Stanton says Michigan’s unclaimed property program also receives savings bonds, as well as other safe deposit box contents that become abandoned and get reported to the unclaimed property program by financial institutions.
“The ‘owners’ of abandoned safe deposit boxes are listed on our website,” Stanton said.
The savings bonds aren’t listed as bonds on the website, instead they’re identified as “tangible items” without revealing the actual contents or dollar value, Stanton said.
“When processing claims by verified owners (or heirs) who are claiming the box, we advise them of the contents,” he said.
Savers on the hunt for the old Treasury Hunt end up disappointed
Most consumers probably don’t care about all the back-and-forth that’s going on behind the scenes to get unclaimed property sites involved with missing savings bonds. They just want an easy way to find that money. And, frankly, things got a bit worse once Treasury Hunt disappeared.
Since 2001, consumers could search online at TreasuryDirect.gov and click on the Treasury Hunt tool to start the process to find many but not all unclaimed bonds that stopped earning interest. It was a useful option, which I navigated myself a few times.
You could discover if you had unredeemed bonds that reached full maturity — and then file the paperwork to claim the bonds.
In August 2023, according to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, Treasury Hunt was upgraded to enable searches for all unredeemed bonds issued since 1957, instead of just bonds issued after 1973. Other steps were taken to improve searches.
But that tool suddenly stopped without much, if any, warning, on Sept. 30, 2025. The Bureau of the Fiscal Service did not disclose that it planned to get rid of Treasury Hunt in the report made to Congress in March 2025.
After burying Treasury Hunt, the TreasuryDirect.gov website then confuses matters even further by telling consumers that they should search for savings bonds via unclaimed property sites — which, as I mentioned earlier, still don’t have information about your savings bonds.
“Inquiries about unclaimed Treasury securities are now handled through individual states’ unclaimed property programs. States can securely access the Treasury’s database of unredeemed or matured securities and can help with claims, including those that may have been transferred to the state,” according to information posted on TreasuryDirect.gov.
Savers and their families are told online that if they want to search for unclaimed Treasury securities, they will need to go to unclaimed.org, which is run by the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators. But again, you’ll get nowhere doing that.
By eliminating the Treasury Hunt search function, Michigan’s Stanton said, the U.S. Treasury has essentially thrust states into the process by referring savings bond owners to the states, even though no state has received the owner information.
Instead of getting information about your savings bonds, you’ll get a letter if you go through the MissingMoney.com site — the official Unclaimed Property website of the National Association of State Treasurers.
That letter states: “Under applicable law, the U.S. Department of the Treasury is the EXCLUSIVE authority in the redemption of unredeemed and matured savings bonds.”
Where to do you go to find lost savings bonds?
If you believe you have lost bonds, you must fill out a detailed form called a “Claim for Lost, Stolen, or Destroyed United States Savings Bonds” or FS Form 1048. You’d mail that form to Treasury Retail Securities Services, P.O. Box 9150, Minneapolis, MN 55480-9150.
Individuals seeking help with completing Form 1048 may reach out to Treasury Retail Securities Services at 844-284-2676. Due to security protocols, requests to search for lost bonds must be made in writing, and cannot be submitted over the phone, a spokesperson for the Department of Treasury’s Bureau of Fiscal Service told the Detroit Free Press.
How long will it take to find your savings bonds?
Be prepared to wait nearly a year for an answer.
Yes, nearly a year.
As of July 2026, requests to locate lost, stolen, or missing savings bonds currently require 11 months or longer for processing, according to a spokesperson for the Bureau of Fiscal Service.
The Bureau of Fiscal Service “continues to experience a high volume of requests to redeem and provide information regarding lost, stolen or mission savings bonds, which is causing delays in response times,” according to a statement emailed to the Detroit Free Press.
Millions of uncashed savings bonds remain out there
Roughly 68 million of all paper savings bonds — or about 1% of all the savings bonds ever issued since 1935 — remain uncashed and three or more years past their final maturity, according to a report made to Congress in March 2025 by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.
Some estimates point to even bigger problems. In December, U.S. Sen. John Neely Kennedy, R-Louisiana, said 100 million unredeemed bonds were sitting on the sidelines, no longer building interest. He put the value at $36.27 billion in matured, unredeemed debt.
Shaun Snyder, CEO of the National Association of State Treasurers in Washington, DC, said his group’s members currently are working with the U.S. Treasury Department to establish the data sharing protocol that will allow states to put the savings bond information on their searchable websites.
“The goal between the federal government and the states is how to you make this as easy as possible for the public to find and claim their savings bonds,” Snyder told the Detroit Free Press.
The information also would be available on MissingMoney.com, the official unclaimed property website of the National Association of State Treasurers. It is not there yet.
Snyder acknowledged that the transition has been confusing for many consumers, including those trying to recover lost savings bonds after the death of a loved one.
“The states don’t have the data yet from the Treasury Department,” Snyder said.
Several states, Snyder said, are working on getting agreements in place with the Treasury Department. Snyder is not sure how soon a system will be in place involving unclaimed property sites.
“We are very focused on moving this along,” Snyder said.
Snyder said state treasurers have been talking for years about how state unclaimed property programs could serve people who are searching for missing savings bonds.
“We know there are billions of dollars that are owed to Americans that are holding these matured, unredeemed savings bonds,” Snyder said.
Many who own savings bonds run into all sorts of problems
Many people who are at wits end have reached out to the office of the congressional representative for their district. And some issues do not involve lost bonds but instead delays and other trouble spots.
U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar, who is facing reelection this year, is highlighting his office’s efforts to help constituents, including offering assistance with their savings bonds, as part of a TV campaign ad.
I reached out to the Detroit Democrat’s office and asked what kind of problems people faced with savings bonds.
One constituent, I was told, wanted assistance with a name change issue where the name on the original savings bonds was different. The office reached out to the Department of Treasury on her behalf. The Department of Treasury contacted this constituent directly after getting a message from Thanedar’s office and was able to help solve the case.
Another constituent needed assistance with getting savings bonds deposited into their bank account; the saver was unhappy with the processing time. The office reached out to the Bureau of Fiscal Service on her behalf and tried to help speed up the process.
Why can’t people seem to handle some of these problems on their own with the Bureau of Fiscal Service?
It’s possible that an explosion of I Bond sales a few years ago contributed to the woes — as well as recent staffing cuts in federal agencies.
“The Bureau of the Fiscal Service has experienced delays after unprecedented sales in prior years and recent workforce reductions impacted its Treasury Securities Program,” Thanedar’s office told me.
Back in 2021 and 2022, I wrote about how interest rates for I Bonds shot up as inflation heated up. As might be expected, inquiries to call centers shot up, more new accounts ended up being established online at TreasuryDirect.gov and the workload built for the Bureau of Fiscal Services.
Earlier in 2026, workforce attrition at Treasury further increased casework volumes and contributed to delays in customer inquiries, redemption requests, and securities servicing, according to Thanedar’s office.
It’s unsettling for families who are trying to track down their savings bonds — or deal with unique problems.
Celeste, who lives in metro Detroit, said she reached out to Thanedar’s office for help with her daughter’s savings bonds. The bonds had been given to the child as birthday gifts and other presents. But the daughter had trouble cashing the bonds after she changed her name, according to her mother. Celeste asked that her last name not be used to protect the family’s privacy.
“The banks were not very helpful. They just dumped us off to the Treasury Department,” Celeste said.
Based on what she could find on the TreasuryDirect site, she really couldn’t navigate her way through solving the issue on her own.
The journey started about five years ago when her daughter was laid off and needed extra money to pay bills.
Yet, it only ended in January.
Celeste wasn’t sure what to do for quite some time. She connected with Thanedar at an ice cream social last summer hosted by Thanedar, who represents Michigan’s 13th Congressional District.
Later, a staff member from the congressional office helped her talk with the right people at TreasuryDirect. Celeste was shocked to ultimately receive a call from a woman named Mary at TreasuryDirect who gave the mom step-by-step instructions on how to fix the problem.
“Talking to her was crucial,” she said, adding she later faced delays after the 43-day federal government shutdown in the fall of 2025.
“We wanted the money in 2021. We got the money in 2026,” Celeste said. “But that’s OK because at least we got it.”
The value of some 15 savings bonds added up to a bit more than $1,200.
Complications involved with treating savings bonds as unclaimed property
Unfortunately, setting up a brand new process to help savers discover lost unclaimed money in savings bonds has its own set of hurdles. How much information can be on these sites and in what form continues to be of concern.
The U.S. Treasury, for example, has stated that it must mitigate the potential for fraud and try to maintain the privacy of bond owners.
“Fraud is a particular concern in the context of savings bonds,” the Bureau of Fiscal Service noted in its 2025 report to Congress.
“In recent years, it has become easier for criminals to create fraudulent paper savings bonds using publicly available information,” the report stated.
At least $50 million in known savings bond fraud had been identified by Treasury as of September 2024. One solution: Banks are now allowed to limit redemptions to established customers.
The TreasuryDirect site indicates: “Beware of internet scams with a picture of this page claiming you can enter your birth certificate number to access bonds owed to you. Those claims are false and attempts to defraud the government can be prosecuted. See Birth Certificate Bonds.”
Another fraud warning: State unclaimed property programs will not text you about money that you’re owed or other unclaimed property. It’s a scam.
More needs to be done to get people their cash in savings bonds
Even with all these hurdles, the shift to unclaimed property, as a theory, makes sense, given the massive amount of savings that is sitting on the sidelines.
Long before the extensive rollout of 401(k) plans at companies across the country in the 1980s, working families in Michigan and elsewhere built a nest egg by using payroll deductions to set aside money to buy U.S. savings bonds.
Paper Series EE and Series I savings bonds — which stopped being issued at local banks in 2012 — proved to be popular, practical gifts to give to those born through the mid-2000s. Starting in 2025, you could no longer buy up to an extra $5,000 in paper I Bonds with your tax refund.
Some families held onto those bonds for years, even after the bonds stopped earning interest. Some waited so long that many paper bonds ended up misplaced.
For years, the U.S. Treasury Department did not contact anyone directly about unclaimed savings bonds — and those uncashed bonds kept growing, particularly as paper bonds ended up lost or damaged.
What’s been done already to free up dollars in savings bonds
In recent years, more efforts have been made to reach out to savings bond holders with savings bonds that already stopped earning interest to encourage them to redeem their bonds.
TreasuryDirect has sent out emails in 2026, for example, to ask savers to validate their bank account and contact information.
In recent years, Treasury has worked on efforts to digitize and modernize records to make the data more accessible, which is needed for outreach efforts, according to the report to Congress issued on March 11, 2025.
“Treasury mailed nearly 36,000 outreach letters in 2021 and 2022 to remind customers of their matured bonds with instructions on the steps needed to redeem them. As a result of these letters, over 386,000 bonds have been redeemed totaling more than $278 million,” according to the report to Congress.
And Treasury sent out nearly 243,000 emails in 2024 to remind customers of their matured bonds, according to the report. As a result, more than 122,000 bond redemptions took place totaling more than $94 million. Such outreach efforts were continuing, according to the report to Congress.
The Treasury also partnered with the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2022 and 2024 to be able to match data and send more than 845,000 letters to veterans. The effort led to more than 764,000 savings bonds being redeemed for more than $304 million.
According to the 2025 report to Congress, the U.S. Treasury Department began collaborating with the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators in January 2020 to discuss how states might handle claims for unclaimed property involving savings bonds.
Talks continue, according to the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators, which had another meeting with Treasury in early July.
Hunting down lost savings bonds will involve a tough journey but think of all that money just sitting there. The extra effort could be well worth it. Your grandma, who gave you all those bonds for gifts, would want you to at least give it a try.
Contact personal finance columnist Susan Tompor: stompor@freepress.com. Follow her on X @tompor.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan savers have $773 million in lost or unredeemed savings bonds
Reporting by Susan Tompor, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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By Susan Tompor, Detroit Free Press | USA TODAY Network
