Where New Yorkers Should Look for Unclaimed Money

New York is an expensive place to live, and a lot of that money passes through accounts people forget about: a security deposit from three apartments ago, a final paycheck from a job you left in a hurry, a utility refund mailed to an old address. Then there are the class action settlements tied to things New Yorkers do every day, like paying a fee at the bodega ATM.

None of it comes back on its own, but searching and claiming are free.

Two kinds of unclaimed money

It helps to separate them, because they work differently.

The first is money the state is holding for you. When a business can't reach you about money it owes, such as a dormant bank account, an uncashed check, a deposit or an insurance payment, it eventually turns the funds over to the state. In New York, the Office of the State Comptroller holds that money until the owner claims it.

The second is settlement money you haven't claimed yet. That money sits in a settlement fund, and you usually have to file a claim before a deadline. Miss it, and your share goes to other claimants or elsewhere. A search of active class action settlements covers this second category, which state databases don't include.

How to search New York's unclaimed funds

The state's Office of Unclaimed Funds runs a free search. The Comptroller's office says it returns more than $2 million a day to rightful owners, and claiming costs nothing, with no time limit.

A few tips:

  • Search every name you've used, including maiden names and the versions on old accounts.

  • Search for relatives too. Heirs can often claim money left by someone who has died.

  • Include any business you've run. Companies have unclaimed funds as well.

  • If you've lived in other states, check them too. MissingMoney.com searches many participating states at once.

You don't need a paid finder service. Searching and claiming directly is free.

Filing a claim with the state

Once you find a match, the claim itself is usually simple. Many New York claims can be started online in a few minutes. Depending on the amount and the type of property, the state may ask you to verify your identity and show a link to the address on file, such as an old lease, a utility bill or a bank statement from that time. Claims for someone who has died take more paperwork, typically a death certificate and proof that you're an heir or the estate's representative.

Keep copies of everything you submit and write down your claim number. Processing times vary, and that number is the fastest way to check status or answer a follow-up request. If the state asks for more documents, respond quickly. An incomplete claim just sits.

Settlements New Yorkers should check this fall

These were accepting claims in early October 2026:

  • ATM fees. If you paid a fee at an independent ATM, the kind found in delis, bodegas and bars, between 2007 and 2026, you may qualify for a share of the $167.5 million Visa and Mastercard settlement. Claims are due February 10, 2027.

  • Apple Siri AI. iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 buyers from June 10, 2024 to March 29, 2025 may claim up to $95 without proof by December 21, 2026.

  • Equifax credit score error. If you received a notice about Equifax's 2022 coding error, you only need the claim number and PIN printed on it. Payments could reach $280. File by December 28, 2026.

Renters: don't forget your deposit

Security deposits are among the most common things New Yorkers leave behind. Under the state's 2019 rent law changes, a landlord must return your deposit within 14 days after you move out, along with an itemized statement of any deductions. If yours never came back, start with the landlord. If the money can't be returned to you, it may eventually end up with the state.

A quick routine

Once or twice a year:

  1. Search the state's unclaimed funds database for every name and address you've used.

  2. Check MissingMoney.com for other states you've lived in.

  3. Look through open class action settlements for the banks, apps and brands you use.

  4. Search your email for "settlement" and "claim" to catch notices that went to spam.

Watch for impostors

Unclaimed funds attract scams for the same reason settlements do: the money is real. The state doesn't charge a fee to release your funds, and a genuine claim never requires a gift card or wire transfer. If someone contacts you out of the blue about money the state is holding, close the message and search the official database yourself.

Start with one search

If you've never checked, start with your own name on the state's unclaimed funds site, then try your parents' names. It takes a couple of minutes and costs nothing.

/
script>

What to Order at New York Restaurants When You're Taking a GLP-1

New York dining is built on abundance. The tasting menu runs nine courses. The shareable plates arrive four at a time. The rooftop menu assumes you will graze throughout the evening. That format worked for decades because it matched how people ate.

It no longer matches how a meaningful share of the room eats. Gallup's National Health and Well-Being Index reported that current GLP-1 use among American adults was 11% in 2026, up from 3% just two years earlier. Access has widened alongside demand, with compounded semaglutide prescribed through telehealth now running a fraction of the $1,000-plus monthly list price that shapes what New Yorkers actually pay for GLP-1s. Put those together, and a lot of people are sitting down to a $145 prix fixe knowing they will finish roughly a third of it.

The question is not whether to go out. It is what to order when volume is capped, and nutritional need is not.

The Restaurant Economy Already Noticed

Cornell researchers publishing in the Journal of Marketing Research linked purchase records from a panel of about 150,000 households to survey data on medication use. Within six months of starting, those households cut grocery spending by 5.3%, and their limited-service restaurant spending fell by roughly 8%. Higher-income households cut grocery spending by more than 8%, which matters in a market where nobody's average check is modest.

The decline concentrated in fast food, coffee shops, and calorie-dense packaged snacks rather than in full-service dining. People are not going out less. They are ordering differently. Meanwhile, the rooms getting the most coverage still run on shareable plates and rooftop menu formats, the exact formats that reward a large appetite and quietly punish a small one.

Why the First Third of the Plate Matters Most

These medications reduce appetite and slow gastric emptying. The practical result is that you have something like a third of your former capacity to meet the same nutritional requirements. Protein, fiber, potassium, and healthy fats all have to fit inside a smaller container.

That reframes the whole ordering decision. A bread basket and a martini are not a poor choice because of calories; they are a poor choice because they consume scarce capacity and return very little. The same logic favors foods that pack a punch per bite. Research on avocados and GLP-1 weight-loss medications found that adding about half an avocado to lunch left people more satisfied and less interested in eating soon afterward, and that a 50-gram serving delivers 3 grams of fiber, 5 grams of monounsaturated fat, and 250 milligrams of potassium. Fiber and potassium are two of the nutrients people tend to fall short on first when portions shrink. A separate trial found that avocado at breakfast raised satiety hormones, including the body's own naturally produced GLP-1.

What That Looks Like on an Actual Menu

Order the dish with structure. A crudo or a simply grilled fish finished with olive oil delivers protein and fat in a small footprint. Guacamole ordered as a first course rather than picked at as a bar snack does real work, since it is fat, fiber, and potassium in a form that goes down easily on a day when appetite is unreliable. A grain bowl with beans and avocado beats a pasta course of identical size on every measure except nostalgia.

What travels badly is predictable. Dishes built mostly on refined flour and sugar occupy space without paying rent. Deep-fried food plus slowed digestion is the most reliable route to feeling unwell two hours later. And large leafy salads, counterintuitively, are a poor use of a small appetite, because you have to get through a great deal of volume before much nutrition arrives.

Structure the order as much as the dish. Taking an appetizer as a main, splitting an entree, or asking for the half portion is not deprivation. It is matching the order to the capacity, which is the only way to leave a good restaurant having eaten well rather than having eaten a little of everything.

The tasting menu is its own problem, and it deserves a separate answer. A nine-course progression is engineered around pacing, and pacing is precisely what these medications interfere with. Courses three through five tend to be where things stop working, because the early bites arrive before fullness registers and the later ones arrive well after it does. Two adjustments help. Call ahead, since kitchens running a fixed menu already handle allergies and restrictions nightly and would far rather adjust portions than watch plates return untouched. And eat the protein and vegetable courses in full while treating the bread service, the pasta interlude, and the dessert progression as optional. That is a heretical way to approach a menu someone spent months designing, but a course eaten with attention is worth more to the kitchen than four courses pushed around a plate.

The Muscle Problem Nobody Orders Around

The stakes here run past comfort. Research from Massachusetts General Hospital, presented at ENDO 2025, found that roughly 40% of the weight lost on semaglutide comes from lean mass, and that lean mass loss during semaglutide treatment was greater in older adults, women, and people eating less protein. Participants who lost more muscle also saw less improvement in blood sugar control.

That turns "order the protein first" from diet-culture advice into something closer to a clinical instruction. If six ounces of food is what you can manage, the branzino should claim most of it before the bread does. Restaurants are unusually well set up for this because protein-forward cooking is what they do best.

It also changes what a good meal out looks like over a week rather than in a single night. Someone eating three restaurant meals in a week on a suppressed appetite is getting a meaningful share of their total nutrition from dining out, which makes those meals worth planning rather than defaulting to. The dish you choose at a Tuesday dinner is no longer a rounding error against everything else you ate. It may be a third of the week's protein. Anyone in this position is better served by raising it with their prescribing provider than by optimizing it alone, since protein needs, medication timing, and tolerance vary enough among people that general advice runs out quickly.

Wine, Cocktails, and the Rest of the Evening

Slowed gastric emptying also changes how alcohol behaves. People on these medications commonly report reaching a given level of intoxication faster, and feeling worse the next day, on considerably less than their old tolerance, particularly on a half-full stomach. In a city where the pairing is often half the reason for the reservation, the workable adjustment is to order food first, drink alongside it rather than ahead of it, and default to the by-the-glass list.

The social layer resolves more easily than people expect. You owe the table nothing by way of explanation, and a deliberate order of a starter, a protein, and something you actually wanted reads as a normal meal rather than a half-finished plate.

The Meal Was Never About the Volume

New York restaurants will adapt to this eventually, as they did with gluten-free and then with zero-proof. Smaller formats, half portions offered without negotiation, and menus that flag protein-forward options are all reasonable bets for the next few years.

Until then, the adjustment belongs to the diner, and it is a small one. Fewer courses. More density in each of them. Protein before bread, fat and fiber before flour, and a clear-eyed sense that when appetite is limited, the choice of what fills it is the entire decision. That was arguably true before the medications arrived. It is just no longer optional.


/
,
script>