If you’ve read our last post on escheatment, you know the basic idea: money you forget about can end up in the hands of your state’s treasury department until you claim it back. Good to know if you’ve lost track of an old account.

But here’s a twist that catches even careful, intentional investors off guard: you can do everything “right” — open an account, invest for the long haul, leave it alone to grow — and still have it flagged as unclaimed. Not because you forgot about it. Because the paperwork thinks you did.

Let’s talk about the difference between smart, patient investing and what a state government considers “abandoned,” because they are not the same thing — but they can look the same on paper if you’re not a little careful.

Wait, isn’t “leave it alone and let it grow” good investing advice?

Yes. Genuinely. Buying and holding, not panic-trading, letting compound growth do its thing over years — that’s a real, sound approach to building wealth, and nothing about this post changes that.

The issue isn’t your strategy. It’s that states use “no activity” as their signal for “this owner is gone,” and intentional long-term holding can look identical to genuine neglect from the outside. A brokerage or fund company doesn’t know the difference between “I’m patiently letting this ride” and “I forgot this exists” — all it sees is a lack of contact.

What actually counts as “activity” to a brokerage or fund company?

This part matters, and it’s more specific than most people assume. Generally, things that count as owner activity and reset the dormancy clock include:

• Logging into your online account
• Making a trade, deposit, or withdrawal
• Directly contacting your broker or the fund company (and it’s worth keeping a record of that contact — a note of the date and who you spoke with)
• Updating your contact information on file

Here’s the part that surprises people: just receiving a statement in the mail typically does not count. Passive things like automatic dividend reinvestment or interest accruing on their own generally aren’t treated as owner-generated activity either, in a lot of states. You can be actively investing and still get flagged, because the account itself isn’t doing anything you initiated.

Exact rules do vary by state and by the type of account, so treat this as the general shape of how it works rather than a guarantee for your specific state or brokerage — when in doubt, ask your provider directly what counts as activity on your account.

Why this trips up long-term investors specifically

Think about the accounts most likely to sit untouched for years by design:

• An old 401(k) from a job you left, now just sitting and growing
• A brokerage account you set up once and intentionally never trade
• A mutual fund account from a gift or a one-time contribution years ago
• An account you deliberately ignore because you know “don’t touch it” is the right move

Every one of these is a case where doing the smart thing — not fiddling with your investments — is exactly what can put you at risk of the account going dormant on paper. It’s a strange, slightly unfair-feeling gap between good financial behavior and how the system tracks “activity.”

How to protect a long-term account without abandoning your strategy

You don’t have to trade more, check your balance daily, or do anything that undermines a sound long-term approach. You just need a light, occasional touch:

1. Keep your contact info current everywhere. Every account — old 401(k)s, brokerage accounts, fund accounts — needs your up-to-date address, email, and phone number. This is the single biggest thing you can do, since a lot of dormancy clocks start ticking specifically when mail comes back undeliverable.
2. Log in periodically, even if you’re not trading. A simple login, once or twice a year, is generally enough to count as activity in most places — no need to touch anything once you’re in.
3. Opt into e-delivery for statements you’ll actually open. An email you open is a better paper trail of contact than a mailed statement that just proves the account exists, not that you’re engaged with it.
4. Respond to account maintenance or “are you still there” notices. Companies are required to try to reach you before reporting an account as unclaimed. Don’t ignore that outreach — a quick reply is often all it takes to reset the clock.
5. Do a once-a-year check-in on every account you hold, the same way we suggested in our last post. It costs you nothing and protects accounts you’re intentionally not otherwise touching.

None of this requires you to abandon a buy-and-hold approach. It just means treating “checking in” and “trading” as two separate things — you can do the first without doing the second.

If it still happens anyway

If an intentionally-held account does get reported as unclaimed despite your best efforts, don’t panic — you don’t lose the money or the growth it earned up to that point. The recovery path is the same one we covered in our last post: search MissingMoney.com or unclaimed.org, find the match, and follow your state’s claim process to get it back, now sitting in cash rather than continuing to grow. It’s an annoyance, not a loss — but it’s one worth avoiding if you can.