State Pension Question

BusyGirl

I'm 48 and I have paid 31 years worth of national insurance contributions, 25 of those were contracted out. If I don't work again until I reach retirement at the age of 67 (this will rise I'm sure) how much state pension will I receive?

molerat

You need to get a pension forecast. https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension
With that amount of contracted out time you should get a 2016 starting figure based on the full (30 years)current pre 2016 pension of £115.95 plus any S2P. You have enough years left to earn or purchase additional years to make up to the full amount if below.

jamesd

We don't know, get yourself a state pension statement to find out. At the moment they can give figures using information until 5 April 2015, it'll be a few months before they can include any work in 2015/16 tax year. Assuming you can use the beta service you'll know the answer within ten minutes of starting the process.

What we do know with high confidence is that you will be able to increase your state pension by making additional payments. This is because each additional year will increase your state pension by 1/35th of the flat rate amount until you reach the flat rate cap at about 155 a week in today's money. If your statement says less than that you can gain from making contributions.

The cheapest way to get extra years is to be self-employed and make self-employed payments. Your self-employment doesn't have to be profitable or do a high volume of business.