State pension

eileenscore

Hi my husband and i are approaching retirement age and are confused!
My husband has full n.i contributions and i am three years short which means that i will get a reduced pension but together we still get the full married couples pension entitlement.
Can you please tell me if it would benefit me to pay the missing years stamps (approx £3,000) and what difference it would make, regards e.

tanith

I don't think Married Couples pension exists anymore you will each get a pension in your own right.. I was short of years too but it was too late for me to make them up... I am not sure of the criteria but someone will be along and tell you if you are able to make more payments and if its worth while

CLAPTON

married women have the option of a pension based on their own contributions or a pension that works out of 60% of their husbands.
in your case it would seem that your own contributions would be higher than that based on your husbands


presumably you have a pension forecast and you know the full pension so you can easily work out the increase in pension available for you by your one off payment of 3000

Niggles

You need to look at the precise figures but in my experience it is usually worth buying extra years of SP. The cost has gone up recently but in the past for an additional year might cost about £450 and you received about £1.50 extra per week indexed linked. Break even was in about six years.
In general I think you can only go back about 5 years to buy additional SP so you may not be eligible to buy your missed years, HOWEVER some new rules came in earlier this year. If you (as a woman) reach State Pension age between 6 April 2008 and 5 April 2015 and you have a total of 20 qualifying years then you can go back a lot further. These years might also be cheaper to buy back.
Definitely worth a look with the real figures.

margaretclare

There is no such thing as a married couple's pension!

Each of you will get your own pension based on your own NI contributions. If you have not paid in enough contributions to get a pension in your own right you can claim your pension on his contributions, but that is only 60% of what he gets. It is definitely worth having your own pension in your own right.

Where did you get the figure of £3,000 from? Have you already received a pension forecast?