Would you pay £800 to get an extra year to make up for State Pension?

pinnks

Firstly, the UK pension will not be affected by aggregation because you already have more than 10 UK years, so adding those voluntary years will increase your pension as discussed above.

Secondly, if you moved to the UK before 31 December 2020 you are covered by the Withdrawal Agreement, so everything continues "as-is" with regards to aggregation and if you are UK born and bred and considering leaving then the Trace Coordination Agreement also covers social security provision and everything continues (for now) as-is.  I think that is up for review after 5 or 10 years but I also think there would be uproar if it were changed with retrospective affect for those with a past record in more than 1 country.  Time will tell on that and we all live in a world where laws can change but they generally have to be human rights act compliant, so retrospective application is not allowed.

Many countries have minimum period requirements, often 5, 10 or 15 years, so if you have 10+ years still to work/contribute in your new home and 15 years in the UK already you are likely to qualify for a pension in your new home as well.  The amount will still be based only on your contributions in your new country, so paying the UK years is unlikely to have much impact in that regard - the main thing is, it cannot hinder.

If it were me, and if I had sufficient funds, I would max out my UK pension by buying a mix of those old years at Class 3 and, assuming you work in the UK until immediately before you leave, and work abroad for any week you want to pay voluntary UK Class 2 NI, Class 2 over the next 10+ years to achieve that.  You just need to look at your pension forecast and work out how many old and future years you would need to do that.  If it all goes a bit pear-shaped and you either don't go, or don't work abroad, Class 3 will still be an option for those future years.

SimonFF

Thanks @pinnks .

One thing I was wrong with, I actually have 19 full years, not 15 like I said, that could become 22 if I pay for the gap.

Strangely enough I have a letter from DWP from 2019 saying that I had 16 qualifying years up to 2017/18, which cannot be true, unless they counted non-full years as qualifying years.

molerat

Did you count the 3 freebies for when you were 16, 17 & 18 ?

SimonFF

molerat said:

Did you count the 3 freebies for when you were 16, 17 & 18 ?

I don't understand.

molerat

Up until 2010 you got 3 years credited for being in full time education.  The system for checking that status was not very robust so pretty much everyone got them.

pinnks

Whether 12, 1 5, 19 or 22, the same principles apply.  The UK pension will be based on however many years you end up with and aggregation is irrelevant and subject to the TCA changing and the treatment for pensions changing, your pension in your new EU home will be based on aggregation of your complete record so far as years do not overlap, in which case the UK overlapping periods will be disregarded in favour of the domestic ones. 

SimonFF

molerat said:

Up until 2010 you got 3 years credited for being in full time education.  The system for checking that status was not very robust so pretty much everyone got them.

You are right. I rang the pension forecast again and they said that anybody who started paying in the system earlier than 2010 was awarded 3 extra years, so they said I now have 22 qualifying years, plus the 3 years I can make up for gets me to 25 years.