Salary sacrifice instead of redundancy sacrifice to save NI

kjs31

I am taking voluntary redundancy in May fairly near to the start of the next tax year and intend to retire. Perfect timing for me as I was going to retire in October anyway and get to leave with 2 years salary. I already have enough NI qualifying years to qualify for a full state pension when that time comes.

I have calculated how much I can pay into my pension in 24/25 based on the annual allowance including carry forward and am restricted as I have already paid quite a chunk into my pension in the last 3 years. I understand that if I pay in via redundancy sacrifice I will save tax but not NI as no employee NI is due on redundancy payments anyway, so I’m thinking that the best course of action will be to sacrifice most of my salary from now until mid May as that will save both tax and NI and then pay the remainder in up to the allowance from the redundancy payment. Is my thinking correct please?