The Colorado Department of the Treasury is holding on to more than $1.5 billion in unclaimed property, and some of it may belong to you. Last week, I checked in with the state treasurer about that program, as well as several other programs that may benefit you.

The Great Colorado Payback program manages the money or property turned over to the Treasury for safekeeping until the state can get it back to you.

“In El Paso County, we’re holding $100 million for residents in El Paso County. Specifically, in Colorado Springs, $65 million,” said Colorado Treasurer Dave Young. “We do our own due diligence to make sure we’re returning the property to the right person. Most of it's money, but we do return safety deposit boxes, as well.”

Last year, almost $58 million was returned to more than 67,000 claimants through the program. The average claim last year was about $855.

“In some cases, if we really know it’s you and we know your address, we’ll send a letter that says, ‘Look for a check’, and we’ll send a check without even filing a claim if it’s a low dollar amount,” said Young. “Well over half a billion dollars has been returned over the many years. It started in 1987.”

You can search online to see if you have any unclaimed property at Colorado.FindYourUnclaimedProperty.com.

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The Treasurer’s Office also offers a Property Tax Deferral program for seniors, active military and other homeowners.

“The Property Tax Deferral program has been around for a while. It’s for seniors and active-duty military, but recently the Legislature has expanded that to all property taxpayers,” said Young. “So, I know people are concerned about the possibility of property taxes going up, because they haven’t gotten their property tax bill yet. That’s coming in January, and when it does, they can go to Colorado.PropertyTaxDeferral.com, and enter the information there.”

“Find out if they can defer some of their property taxes. Now what this means is it’s a loan. They pay simple interest to the state with the loan when they repay it. It may be a good safety valve for people that are experiencing a lot of growth and are worried about making a mortgage payment or buying groceries or that sort of thing,” Young added.

Finally, we talked about the Colorado Secure Savings program.

“It’s for people in the private sector who don’t have access to a retirement savings program at work. It turns out there’s about a million people in the state of Colorado that are in this situation; about 40% of our private sector workforce,” said Young. “We’ve come up with a solution; Colorado Secure Savings program. It makes it very easy for someone to save. You get automatically enrolled by your employer if you don’t have a savings plan at work.” You can find more information at ColoradoSecureSavings.com.