Do you know that the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend is your share of money from the sale of oil pumped out of the ground in Alaska?

Beginning in 1982, Alaska Permanent Fund Dividends have been sent to every eligible resident. Each year thousands of kids receive dividends.

In 2005 alone, approximately 173,000 kids were paid a dividend of $845.76!

If you had all of the money from all of the kids that received a 2005 dividend, you would have approximately $146,316,480!

Wondering what you could buy with $146,316,480? Take a look at it like this:

• You could buy 2,926,914 PSP games at $49.99 each.

• 2,439,014 Xbox 360 games at $59.99 each.

• 10,458,647 DVD's at $13.99 each.

• 8,611,917 Music CD's at $16.99 each.

• 487,737 iPod's at $299.99 each.

• 121,930 laptops for $1200.00 each.

• Or you could take three million of your closest friends to Disneyland for the day!

It gets better. This year's check is for $1,106.96!

How do you get a dividend?

As long as you are a kid, somebody has to fill out a dividend application for you. That somebody can be your father, mother, grandmother, brother (sponsor) - just about anyone that can show that they are the adult that should be filing for you.

After an application has been filled out for you, if it was delivered by mail, it comes to Juneau. Each envelope that is received in Juneau is checked, rechecked and then checked again to make sure that we get everything that was sent in.

After that we take a picture of everything that was in the envelope and assign a special number to each application.

The next step is that we key all of the information off of the paper applications into the computer.

After the applications get keyed into the computer, they are looked at to see if everything is OK.

If you are eligible, a dividend is issued in your name, usually in October of that year. If you are not eligible, we let your sponsor know why you are not eligible and what they can do about it.

We store processed applications until the end of the year.

When a year is up, we send the paper applications to a landfill to be burned. We keep images and data on the database.

Your sponsor can also file an online application for you.

That's about it.

Fun facts!

In 2005, 1,247,706 documents were received by PFD officials. Many of these were applications and other documents such as birth certificates, supplemental schedules, education forms, etc.

Remember that we have to take a picture of every single piece of paper that was keyed into the computer - every piece! That means that we would have 1,247,706 pictures! Wouldn't your hands start to get tired after taking the first 1,000 pictures or so?

What about phone calls? Did you know that we received 89,821 calls in 2005? In a year with 365 days, that is an average of a little over 10 phone calls per hour! Could you imagine answering the phone 10 times each hour with no breaks for one whole year?

The dividend office employees helped thousands of applicants this year with their PFD. In fact, during 2005, employees assisted 54,568 applicants in person!

You have to have a parent or guardian file an application for you until you turn 18! Once you reach the age of 18 you can file for your own dividend. Of course, you still have to be an Alaska resident.

Guess what? If the person who should have filed an application for you forgot (like in 2003), you can file for it yourself once you turn 18, or are legally emancipated (meaning you have the same rights as someone who is 18). The two most important things to remember about this are:

• You only file for dividends that you didn't get as a kid; and

• You absolutely, positively have to do this by the time you turn 19.

If you know that you didn't get a prior year dividend because one was not filed for you, contact a dividend information office when you turn 18. They can help you!

This article published in The Alaska Star on Thursday, October 5, 2006.