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We all love to find cash we had long forgotten about, whether it's a one pound coin found down the back of the sofa or an old five pound note stuffed into the pocket of a pair of jeans not worn since last year.

But what if you could get your hands on hundreds, or even thousands, of pounds you never knew you had? It is possible.

Banks and building societies believe there could be as much as £2.8 billion lying in dormant bank accounts - quite simply, bank accounts opened over the years that have been forgotten about. It could be an account you opened as a child or an account that has long slipped your mind because it had only a few quid left in it. It could even be an account left by a dead relative.

And just because you forgot about it, it doesn't mean the bank has - they may have been paying interest on the money in these accounts for years. It might not be worth a fortune, but it's your money - who would you rather have spend it, you or the bank?

Or it could be the government. Right now, Gordon Brown is looking at ways to change the law and get his hands on your forgotten cash. You need to get it back now, before it's all gone.

There's more. Experts estimate there are billions forgotten about in the form of life policies, pensions, shares and national savings. In fact, the amount could be as much as a whopping £15 billion.

Some of that money could belong to you. So how do you go about getting it back?

The first and most obvious place to start is a top-to-bottom search of your house. Look for old bank account passbooks, pensions records and any other financial records you might have at the bottom of dusty drawers. Ask your family to do the same, they might turn up the passbooks of bank accounts you opened as a child.

Find anything? If you have, contact the bank, the pension fund or the insurance provider to make plans to get your money refunded. Often, the company that took your money will no longer exist - names change and financial firms are taken over again and again over the years.

In that case, you need to find out who is now responsible for your money. Fortunately, that only takes a quick phone call. For banks that no longer exist, contact the Financial Services Authority (0845 6061234). For pensions, get in touch with The Pension Service (0845 6002537). For insurers, ring the Association of British Insurers (020 7216 7455).

Chances are, you didn't find anything - important paper work has an uncanny ability to vanish when you most need it. But if you suspect you have bank accounts, pensions or insurance policies you've forgotten about, you can still trace them and claim back the cash.

If you vaguely remember once opening a bank account, the British Bankers' Association can help. You can download a form from their website and return it. The more you can remember, the better - but you don't have to know much.

If you think you were once with a building society, you can fill in an online application to have your lost funds traced and returned.

You can do the same for national savings and premium bonds and The Pensions Service can help you uncover lost pensions you may have once contributed to.

All these services are free. But if you want to invest £18, the
Unclaimed Assets Register (UAR) will do the sleuthing for you. In the case of lost bank and building society accounts, this may not be worth it, while searching for lost pensions can be done yourself.

But if you think you may own shares, unit trusts, life insurance or a host of more complicated investments, you should consider speaking to them.

It may be particularly be worth contacting UAR if a relative has recently died and left little or no details on their finances. Over a lifetime, they could easily have built up an impressive portfolio of investments they forgot to tell anyone about, and now it's lying around - just waiting to be claimed.

It might seem a little morbid trying to hunt down a deceased relatives' lost cash, but your dear old gran would rather you had her money than a bank, an investment firm or even the government.

Do remember that you'll need some kind of documentation to prove you're related to the deceased - death certificate, probate, copy of a will or a letter from a lawyer.

Finally, there's the National Lottery. It's a long shot, but there are millions and millions of pounds in lottery prizes still waiting to be claimed - including a £2.5 million jackpot belonging to someone in Tunbridge Wells. These need to be claimed within 180 days or they will be lost forever.

So if you're the sort of person who buys the odd Lotto ticket and then forgets to check the results, track down those old tickets and run the numbers through the Lotto site's results checker as soon as you can.

You never know, you could be sitting on millions.

How to claim your lost cash

• Search high and low for old bank and building society bank account passbooks, pensions and insurance policy statements, share ownership statements and even Lotto tickets

• Get in touch with the institutions associated with anything you find or, if these institutions don't seem to exist, the relevant industry association

• If you can't find any paperwork, download tracing request forms from the websites of these associations and let them find your money for you

• If a relative has died, do the same in their name - or get the executor of their estate to do it for you

• Check the results for old Lotto tickets