Pension Boosting Calculator- PLEASE HELP US TEST!!

Former_MSE_Dan

Hi folks,

We've put together a quick tool to help people who are considering buying up years of National Insurance Contributions to top up their Basic State Pension entitlement.

This will go into a newly written article explaining a LOT more than this, but we'd love some early feedback, especially from any of you who have experience with pensions.

To be entitled to a Basic State Pension, you need to have paid National Insurance for a sufficient number of years. If you weren't working for any reason and you're short, you can buy extra years. This can boost the level of weekly state pension you get once at retirement age. However, choosing whether to do so is complicated and depends on your circumstances, so this calc gives a rough picture of how long you'd need to live for it to be worth it.

It's based on the current cost of buying up old NI contributions as this is what you'd pay if you bought them now (the price rockets by 50% in April, for some, so don't delay). We have used the weekly State Pension payout, of £95.25, from the start of the next tax year, on 6 April, as that's what you'll get in a few weeks. This rate will undoubtedly rise over the next few years, but we are not going to make any assumptions about this within the calc.

At the moment, this is a work in progress, so any feedback about how the calc works, the actual maths or the functionality, would be fabulous. To see it, go to

Pension Boosting Calculator

Cheers

Dan


Quick Update Note by Martin

Just noting some of the questions and comments below. This calculator is part of a new 4,000 word (which is a lot) detailed guide to the state pension, delaying taking pensions, pension credit & how it all works that we've put serious hours into. So things like the differences between men and womens entitlements are all in there. The calculator is just for a specific task.

libra10

The calculator worked really quickly.

Thank you

scaty

Hi
What about women who have been divorced/ widowed? I know I'll be having my NI contributions bumpedup from my x paying into the system.

Maybe a little info on the rights of women & NI contributions. One size does not fit all, unfortunately.

Always remember my dad paying extra to 'see mum a;right' and the pair died within 2 years of each other and all that money was basically wasted.:o

soulsaver

The 'amount of time you need to live' doesn't seem to change after it has done he calc once? So if I alter the number of years I want to buy up or down it doesn't change, unless its relaunched?

Fairwinds

Any reason the retirement date doesn't go past 2024?

Former_MSE_Dan

Hi GordonD,

That's odd, the retirement date goes up to 2024 for me (and thats how we built it).

is it just stopping at 2012?

Dan

DRS1

Yes it goes up to 2024 for me too. I was going to ask why it stopped there? Is it only for the over 50s?

Fairwinds

On trying again it now goes to 2024 - might just have been my error

Former_MSE_Dan

GordonD - thats good news, phew!

DRS1 - From 2024, there are all sorts of changes with retirement ages increasing etc. We've tried to keep this ready reckoner fairly simple for the time being; we may put our minds to how to extend it once we;ve got it up and running


Thanks to everyone for helping us so far

dunstonh

Does this take into account the 2010 changes or does it assume current tax year and remains unchanged?

MSE_Martin

dunstonh wrote: »

Does this take into account the 2010 changes or does it assume current tax year and remains unchanged?

This is based on figures for doing it now, the article explains how its cheaper now than waiting (hence why we're doing it at such speed)... and we plan to change the calculator on 6 April with the new numbers.