"Retiring" - employment status and effect on insurance?

dunroving

I am in the lucky (sort of) situation of retiring early, in about 2 months. The "sort of" bit is that I have had some health problems that are pushing me to retire early. The opportunity to cease F-T work has been facilitated by my employer offering me a voluntary redundancy package. I plan to start taking employer pension at that point, hence my perspective that I am retiring, not being made redundant.

I have a number of questions regarding home and car insurance (I searched on the insurance sub-forum for the term "retired" and couldn't find anything relevant.)

My insurance is renewed annually and paid annually (next month for home insurance; January for car insurance). Am I required to inform my insurers when I retire, or can this wait until the subsequent renewal point?

I do not plan to claim any unemployment benefits (I think I may be eligible for contribution-based JSA, but not sure). However, I might register as unemployed in order to get NI credits. Is my employment status therefore "retired", "unemployed", or "self-employed"? I do a small amount of consultancy work (typically from a few hundred ££ to a couple of thousand ££ per year so far), hence the possibility of declaring as self-employed. (On a separate note, I also plan to look into whether it therefore makes sense to declare as self-employed for NI purposes).

What is the likely effect of "retiring" from F-T work on my home insurance and car insurance? (I have just seen the other post about home insurance; looks like "no effect" pretty much covers that).

Thanks in advance for any advice!

pollypenny

If your house generally is occupied during the day you may well find insurance cheaper when you renew.

McKneff

My car insurance went up £50 when i retired. They said it was because if i was not tucked upmatvwork i would be doing more driving so more of a risk

CommyTooper

You will have to agree to actively look for work if you sign on. Even if you don't get paid any benefits due to other income or savings level.
Check how many qualifying years you have towards your state pension, get a state pension forecast. I work on a term time only basis, but due to me having 44 qualifying years, there is no need for me to sign on to qualify for my stamp when not working.
Our income would mean I wouldn't get any dole money anyway.

alanq

Non-working, non-jobseeking men may get pension credits for the years between state pension start date for a woman with the same date of birth and their own state pension start date.

https://www.gov.uk/automatic-pension-credits-for-men

Deneb

I ran various scenarios through car insurance quotation sites last year before I retired, and found that in general terms, being "retired" either made very little difference or gave a slight reduction to quotes, but declaring oneself of "independent means" caused them to shoot up dramatically. Insurers' fear of some sizzled old *** imbibing all day down the club and driving home possibly!

I have now been retired a few months and am currently obtaining car insurance quotes as my insurance expires in a few weeks time. I have obtained some quotes substantially lower than any that I was offered last year, i.e. down from around £200 to £160 at the lower end. However, the cheapest are with insurers that I wouldn't consider. I will probably go with a quote of £248 which is still a reduction on my last renewal and not bad considering reports that car insurance has increased across the board in the last year.

I told my home and contents insurer mid term. They made a note of my retirement on the policy, but no mention of any increase or decrease on the premium. Whether that has anything to do with my having haggled an almost 50% reduction from them at last renewal anyway, who knows?

The only problem I'm finding with car insurance online quotes is a lack of consistency in the information they ask for. My wife has also retired from full-time work but went back for 2 days a week. Almost all online quote sites indicate that I should put her occupation down in line with how she spends the majority of her time, i.e. housewife. Some then prompt for or have an option to include details of any part-time work, but some have no facility to add that information. I wonder in the latter case how insurers then reconcile a retiree and housewife asking for SDP & commuting cover, which we need for the odd occasions when Mrs D may need to use my car to get to work if hers is unavailable.

Edit: Just to add, having re-read the OP's post, my view is that you should tell your insurers mid term when you retire. The small print in most policies invariably states that you should tell them of any changes that might be relevant to their risk. It is for them to decide whether the information is relevant or not, but as long as you've told them they can't argue that you have withheld a material change if it comes to a claim.

Savvy_Sue

pollypenny wrote: »

If your house generally is occupied during the day you may well find insurance cheaper when you renew.

Not in our experience, when we renewed and said DH was working from home it went up! Apparently being at home more increases the risk of accidental damage to the place ...

moneyistooshorttomention

I don't have accidental damage add-on to my insurance. I'm a pretty careful person/no pets/no smoking and so I figure I don't need it. If someone else does "accidental damage" in my house = down to them to pay for it.

After a recent thread on here to this effect of insurance being cheaper in retirement I spoke to my insurer and said "You know I swopped insurer to yourselves at 50 - because I knew my insurance should be cheaper. Well - I don't think I told you I'm also retired now. So how much extra discount do I get for that?".

The answer was 3p per year. Yep...that's three pennies for a whole year:cool::cool::cool:

I mustn't spend it all at once...

getmore4less

if doing quotes,

There is the option "house person" I guess the new PC term for SAHM/D.

if you just stop work and are not looking(unemployed) but could work house person must be a legitimate category.

On some quotes it came out cheaper than retired.

missile

Deneb wrote: »

... I wonder in the latter case how insurers then reconcile a retiree and housewife asking for SDP & commuting cover, which we need for the odd occasions when Mrs D may need to use my car to get to work if hers is unavailable..

Be careful.
A friend of ours had an issue when her husband declared she was retired. She volunteers 1/2 day per week. She had an accident on her way to voluntary "work". Insurers refused to pay for the damage to their car. Eventually agreed to pay as the "work" was unpaid.

Deneb

missile wrote: »

Be careful.
A friend of ours had an issue when her husband declared she was retired. She volunteers 1/2 day per week. She had an accident on her way to voluntary "work". Insurers refused to pay for the damage to their car. Eventually agreed to pay as the "work" was unpaid.

It's OK. Just taken out a new policy and everything fully disclosed, spoke with an agent after getting the online quote to make sure everything was recorded correctly before buying.