Back in the day, I worked for Telus. I started in April 2001, and was caught in the mass layoffs of September 2002 with 6500 other happy little Telus employees. They paid me a great deal of severance to go away, especially considering that I had only worked there for a year and a half… so I happily went away, and never looked back.
Most of the time that I worked at Telus, I lived by myself in a cute little basement suite in north Burnaby. It wasn’t much — standard basement suite fare, low ceilings, odd layout, back door entrance. But it had insuite laundry, and who cares about low ceilings? I’m short. I referred to it as the Hobbit Hole.
I lived there for about a year and a half, moving to Yaletown about a month before the layoffs came down. Oops. Anyway, life moved on from there and I didn’t think much about it. My next job was at a small software company in Vancouver, where I worked twice — first from March 2003-July 2005, then from March 2007-September 2010.
My employer was a guy named Dave, who’s pretty awesome. So a few months ago, I got an email from a slightly confused Dave asking if I had any idea why he would have received mail for me from Standard Life at his new house. Perhaps the office manager updated an address wrong? Except they did nothing with Standard Life, so … huh. Wtf.
So he sends me the address.
And it’s The Hobbit Hole.
He’s living in the upstairs portion (he’s got 4 kids, so y’know, a 600sqft 1 bdrm isn’t going to cut it) but still. What are the odds?
So I finally picked up this letter from him a few months ago, and I assumed it had something to do with my pension… or something. I figured there might be a few hundred in it because I really didn’t work there very long, but whatever. Not really a big deal.
This morning I was trying to file some things and get my desk more in order, and I came across the letter from Standard Life. So I called in with a bit of a sheepish “I have no idea what I have with you… help?”
And I was right, it’s my Telus pension that was converted to an RSP after I left. And … wtf. There’s over $4000 in it.
So, sweet. I’ve got my address updated, they now know that I really do exist, the account is no longer abandoned, and they’re mailing me information for how to see what I’ve got, and I’m reasonably certain once I get login access, I’m cashing that puppy out and paying off one of my credit cards. Yay, found money!
That’s so strange and rad! The universe really wanted you to have that money.
I know! I mean, I had some vague idea that I’d had a pension with Telus once, and there was probably some money somewhere that had my name on it… but I didn’t have the slightest idea where I’d ever find it. If not for Dave moving into my old house nine years later, there’s no way I’d have known about it!
Much as that money might be easy to use for debt, you might want to talk to a financial advisor about how to best deal with it in order to minimize the cut the government takes. If you want, I can recommend the advisor I used when I was laid off too – she still handles most of my financial advising needs. You know how to reach me if you want the referral info.
That is great news!