Foreign & UK pension advice

[Deleted User]

SomeMadeUpName said:

Deleted_User said:

SomeMadeUpName said:

@Mordko, unbelievable really isn't it, I'll be pushing it to all my contacts who qualify as an unmissable deal.
But how do we as a country afford it?
A native Swede could (have, pre Brexit) come to UK after uni to work in bars in London for 3 or 4 years, then go home to take up their 'real' life.  They then qualify to pay the next 32 years of class2 voluntary NI at £158 a year (about the price of a round of drinks in Stockholm).  Then at 67yrs old we (the UK state) will pay them £9k+ pa for the rest of their lives.
Not being jingoistic (and for reference I was & am fiercely anti Brexit) but this would be a non-native person who just 'visited' the UK for a few years in their youth.  I spent a good while in the US and Australia in my early 20's, bet I get zero rights like that there!
Hey ho.

Well, I am almost that Swede. I spent 10 years in the UK, naturalized and emigrated. Having worked as an engineer, I paid quite a bit more tax than a waiter. 

The system is crazy in more than one way.  I will be getting full British pension which is nuts but I’ll take it.  Its a bit less unfair than in the case of a guy who left Britain after graduation and never worked at all. 

On the other hand, my British pension won’t have inflation protection as long as I stay in Canada, unless I move to Boston. If I were to retire in the UK, I would also get triple lock (or whatever its called), which is a crazy incentive for people to spend lives and pay taxes abroad and then return just in time to burden NHS. 

Canadian system makes sense.  Operates almost like a DB pension.  Years you pay count, and to get a full year credit you need to have earnings of over $60K (you pay in a proportion of your salary up to 60k).  If you leave the country, even for a year, you don’t get any credit. Its like you changed companies. But you’ll get the same pension for the same years of pensionable service, regardless of where you are. You earned it.  And your contributions have been invested by an independent agency; Your Canadian State Pension isn’t paid out of future generations taxes. 

Sounds much better.
I do sometimes wonder what would have happened had I accepted the scholarship to a Canadian uni I was offered, might still be there now. Instead I went to a US uni, and decided that country was definitely not for me.
I'm surprised Canada isn't on the list of countries where your pension is indexed, it being commonwealth.

None of the Commonwealth countries get UK indexation.  US and EU do, not sure where else.  

xylophone

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01457/
https://www.gov.uk/state-pension-if-you-retire-abroad/rates-of-state-pension

muze77

Everyone, the rules quoted by the advisor are not correct, I mean the bit where she needs 10 years in the UK otherwise she is definitely out of luck.
If she worked in the UK before Brexit, she can definitely count years working in an EU country towards the 10 year requirement. If all years together work out to be 10 years or more, she will be able to get the 5 years of UK state pension (or whatever you said it was) when she retires. I wanted to write this down in case there are people on here who will not qualify for voluntary class 2 or class 3 National Insurance (NIC) contributions. I have checked this with the EU, and the rules are clear. I do not know though how it will be applied in the future, i.e., if people arrive in the UK after Brexit, I imagine there might be a law change at some point in the future? But that does affect rights built up before Brexit.
By the way, anyone can check this on the Europa website, it is hard to find (wish I had a link), but they explain it all in detail.