Unless you know where to look, missing money may never be found. Knowing that there is even something to look for is often a challenge. Money typically goes missing when someone dies and their heirs are unaware of accounts held by the deceased. As a result, money, property, and other funds due to the heirs often go missing, perhaps never to be found again.

For quite some time, states have had offices, departments, and websites to help consumers find and make claims against this missing money. Now, missingmoney.com has started to pull state-based information into more of a national database. 38 states, plus Washington, D.C. are currently included in the Missing Money database. Instructions for locating records from other states can also be found at the site.

While this site seems to be a great resource for locating missing money, it also highlights a problem that we should all try to avoid. Ensure that all of your accounts, no matter the size, are disclosed in your will, to your spouse, and/or to the executor of your estate. It’s great that missingmoney.com may help to find wealth you may have a right to claim, but even better would have been if the original account holder hadn’t let their money go missing in the first place.

MyGallons.com is a new service that allows you to prepay for gasoline, “locking in today’s prices.” As more an more people come to the seemingly inevitable conclusion that gas prices can only continue to rise, it’s no surprise that a company came along to take advantage of this line of thinking. I seem to remember another item that could only go up and up in price: real estate. Prepaying for gas at today’s prices seems so savvy because the thought of a decline in gas prices is so unbelievable to most people today.

Obviously if gas prices start to fall, mygallons.com is going to start making more and more of a profit as people pay more than the market price for gas. Prepaying only locks in today’s “low prices” if prices continue to climb. If they fall, then prepaying is locking in today’s “high prices.” I suspect that mygallons.com is hedged for either move in the market. Since their public business model only seems to profit with falling prices, they are probably using some of the money you give them to buy oil futures expecting price increases. If that’s true, they stand to profit either way.

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President Bush today signed into law an updated GI Bill that had broad bipartisan support. The new bill provides service members, who served in the military for at least three years, full tuition at any in-state public university along with a monthly housing stipend. The benefits (which are as high as $90,000) can also be used at private schools.

The bill adjusts the benefit scale based on cumulative active service, a move that levels the playing field between active duty, National Guard, and Reserve members. Everyone on active duty will receive the benefit from now on free of charge.  Previously, service members paid $1200 to buy into the benefit. Benefits are also significantly higher, up to $90,000 from $40,000 under the old plan. The bill also allows veterans to transfer education benefits to their spouses or children.

With the rising cost of secondary education,  service to our country is a great way to pay for college and an excellent way for our govenment to reward our brave veterans.

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Citing higher gasoline prices, the IRS has increased the optional business standard mileage rate from 50.5 cents per mile to 58.5 cents per mile for July-December of 2008. Taxpayers can use the optional standard rates to calculate the deductible costs of operating an automobile for business. This is also the rate at which your company will typically reimburse you for business mileage using your personal automobile.

This update is great news for business owners who use the rate to calculate deductions and employees who get reimbursed. Normally, the IRS Mileage Rate is set once for the entire year, so it’s nice to see that this special adjustment was made, considering how high gas prices have risen this year. The standard mileage rate covers not just gas, but also all other costs of operating the vehicle. Business typically have two options for deducting transportation expenses. They could either buy a company car and pay for all of the insurance, gas, maintenance, etc, or use personal vehicles and reimburse at the standard mileage rate. The standard rate is used to simplify reimbursements, but actual costs of operating a personal car for business use may also be used in some cases.

As part of the update, the new six-month rate for computing deductible medical or moving expenses will also increase by eight cents to 27 cents a mile.

Lending Club, which has been in a quiet period due to a pending SEC filing, issued the following press release today:

Lending Club Files Registration Statement with the SEC

SUNNYVALE, CA - June 20, 2008 - Lending Club announced today that it has filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission under the Securities Act of 1933 relating to its social lending platform.

The registration statement seeks to register the offer and sale of up to $600,000,000 in Member Payment Dependent Notes to be issued by Lending Club in a continuous offering following the effective date of the registration statement. The Notes will be issued in series with each series of Notes corresponding to a single consumer loan to a borrower member. Lender members will direct Lending Club to apply the proceeds Lending Club receives from the sale of each series of Notes to fund a particular consumer loan selected by the lender member and originated through the Lending Club platform.

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Rising gas prices causes people to try many alternative forms of transportation. One that has been getting a lot of coverage in the news is the Segway scooter. Getting about 25 miles to a charge means they are a viable alternative in some circumstances. Having ridden one myself, I can also vouch for the “cool factor” (if only in a nerdy sense of the word) as well. Before you go out and buy one though, consider a much more affordable option that has many of the same benefits: a bike.

People who do the cost analysis of a Segway usually just think about the savings in gas. For example, paying $75 a week for gas ($325 / month) means that you’d recover the Segway’s $5000 asking price (or more depending on model, taxes, shipping, etc) after owning it for about 16 months. Other costs associated with the Segway include

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The recipient of the first book giveaway has been chosen and notified by email. They will be receiving my copy of Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational. Anyone who is interested in purchasing a copy of the book can find it here on Amazon.

Tomorrow I’ll be posting a review of the book I’m currently reading, Perfectly Legal by David Cay Johnston.  Be sure to make yourself eligible for that book giveaway, which will be held on June 22nd.

I recently received a forwarded email that has been circling the net for quite some time. The premise of the email is that if you are ever forced to withdraw money from an ATM by a thief you could enter your PIN in reverse order to summon the police. While such an idea has repeatedly been proposed, it hasn’t actually made its way into ATMs.

You can imagine the value of such a system. It would have marginal added cost, would allow transactions to continue, and offer the hope of rescue for victims. The main drawbacks often cited are that:

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Reducing the estimated 38 billion plastic water bottles discarded each year will obviously have a huge environmental impact. Those environmental benefits may be leading this effort to switch from bottled water to tap water, but the finances of making the change should also not be overlooked.

Cindy Crawford has joined the effort by teaming up with PUR Water Filtration Systems (PUR) to promote a limited edition Thirsty for Change water bottle. The aluminum water bottle is manufactured and sold by SIGG, the Swiss Engineered Water Bottle company. The idea is to reuse the bottle and fill it with filtered tap water instead of buying bottled water. The Thirsty for Change website claims that PUR filtered water is 1/10 the cost of bottled water, which will save an average of $600 per year. Filtered tap water is being promoted because PUR is the co-sponsor of the initiative but depending on where you live, you may be able to drink unfiltered tap water to save even more.

Any reusable bottle will allow you to make this change, but if you order the limited edition Thirsty for Change water bottle, all proceeds from the sale will benefit Procter & Gamble’s Children’s Safe Drinking Water Program, which helps reduce water-related disease in many developing countries around the world.

Personally, I use a Nalgene bottle that cost about $10 less than the SIGG bottle.

Postage rates will increase on Monday, May 12th. I previously covered why Forever Stamps are a Losing Investment. For the next few days, it does make sense to buy enough forever stamps to cover a few months worth of your postage needs. You can buy forever stamps at $0.41 each through Saturday, May 10th and they will be valid for first class mail that would normally cost 42 cents after that date.