Stimulus Check: How to Track Your Payment's Progress With USPS

The U.S. Postal Service has a tool that can help you track your second stimulus check, if it has not arrived yet. Most Americans have already received the $600 emergency payment, either via direct deposit or mail. For those who haven't, the USPS website lets you track it from when the IRS mails it to the time it arrives at your door.

The USPS offers a free service for tracking any mail coming your way — including a stimulus check. It is called USPS Informed Delivery, and it automatically scans all of your letters, traces their progress and can even give you updates whenever it gets closer to your home. Informed Delivery apps are available on iPhone and Android devices and on computers through a web browser, as well. Sign up for the service here.

Be warned: there is no way to filter your Informed Delivery results for one specific piece of mail, so you will need to look through everything coming your way to find your stimulus check. You can also toggle the notification options if you don't necessarily want to keep getting alerts once your check arrives.

Before signing up for Informed Delivery, it would be best to check in with the IRS itself. The agency's website has a stimulus check tracker tool, which can tell you if you are eligible for a check, if it's coming and if there are any problems processing it.

The IRS is facing a deadline of Friday, Jan. 15, 2021 to send out all of the second stimulus checks, so any stragglers should be on the way soon. The checks come from a hasty economic relief bill passed in December, providing some coronavirus pandemic relief to the American people before the 116th Congress concluded.

Those who don't get a stimulus check by the deadline will have to file a claim during tax season to get the money they are entitled to. The IRS has a form for that, which just requires applicants to prove they are eligible for the check.

With this money now mostly distributed, many Americans are turning hopeful eyes towards the plan for a third stimulus check. President-elect Joe Biden has said he supports plans for another economic recovery bill — perhaps providing as much as $2,000 in direct payments to individual taxpayers. Formal talks for such a plan will not begin until Biden and the new crop of lawmakers take office, but the prospects look hopeful, since Democrats will now have the majority in the United States Senate.