Over-paying voluntary NIC in case future gov changes finishing post?

donglefan

I wonder if it's worth paying more than the currently necessary years in case a future goverment changes the rules so that, for example, by the time I retire, the qualification for a full pension might have increased to 40 years of contributions?

QrizB

How old are you now?

What does your State Pension forecast say?

https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension

Sarahspangles

donglefan said:

I wonder if it's worth paying more than the currently necessary years in case a future goverment changes the rules so that, for example, by the time I retire, the qualification for a full pension might have increased to 40 years of contributions?

The Chancellor might like you to.

There will be people (I am one) who will pay in for more years than are required to qualify for a full State Pension, because although we’ve ‘got there’ we can’t avoid paying NI on earnings in the last few years of our career.

If you’re talking about buying some incomplete years now, planning to qualify for a full State Pension earlier, at a point when you’re probably still going to be working, then you might not benefit. You could put the same money into a SIPP? If the goalposts move then perhaps there’ll be an opportunity to buy years at that point.

donglefan

"If the goalposts move then perhaps there’ll be an opportunity to buy years at that point."  That's a good thought, that they might re-open the backdating to 2006 if they move the goalposts.  
I'm concerned that a future government will try to renage on pension liabilities as i can't see how they will be able to honour them, given the state of the UK economy.

QrizB

donglefan said:

I'm concerned that a future government will try to renage on pension liabilities as i can't see how they will be able to honour them, given the state of the UK economy.

Eventually they'll abandon the triple lock (it's mathematically inevitable). That will give them lots of options for managing their liabilities.

pinnks

That is inevitable but as it is not a statutory requirement, they can just exclude it from their manifestos.  The legal requirement for the basic and new state pensions is that they increase by at least the increase in average earnings.  Additional pension and protected payments are CPI.  So, they could ditch the 2.5% (unlikely to be an issue anyway for the next Parliament given where we are with inflation) and settle on leaving the law as-is, or changing the state pension back to CPI, where once it was... 

p00hsticks

donglefan said:

I wonder if it's worth paying more than the currently necessary years in case a future goverment changes the rules so that, for example, by the time I retire, the qualification for a full pension might have increased to 40 years of contributions?

I'd say no. 
The last time the government changed the goalposts (with the introduction of the new State Pension in April 2016, which imposed a minimum requirement of ten NI years to qualify for any State Pension), they also put through legislation to ensure that people could obtain those years (the 'temporary' extension to buy years back to 2006 we now have).