State pension forecast, does this mean what I think it does?

Jon_01

My wife's just left her job. She has 4 years to go to get to pension age and doesn't intend to carry on working.

Her forecast on the gov site give her weekly/monthly forecast and says, 'You cannot improve your forecast any more.'

Does that mean that she doesn't have to carry on paying NI through voluntary contributions, or are we misreading it?

Many thanks...

molerat

If the top green box and the only amount in the text below are the same along with that statement then yes, she needs do no more.

Jon_01

molerat said:

If the top green box and the only amount in the text below are the same along with that statement then yes, she needs do no more.

Many thanks

SacredStephan

Jon_01 said:

Her forecast on the gov site give her weekly/monthly forecast

Just to note that the State Pension is not paid monthly, it's paid weekly or four-weekly.

jouef

Jon_01 said:

My wife's just left her job. She has 4 years to go to get to pension age and doesn't intend to carry on working.

Her forecast on the gov site give her weekly/monthly forecast and says, 'You cannot improve your forecast any more.'

Does that mean that she doesn't have to carry on paying NI through voluntary contributions, or are we misreading it?

Many thanks...

My online forecast said “You cannot improve your forecast any more” but the Future Pensions helpline got me an extra grand a year.

jouef

Jon_01 said:

My wife's just left her job. She has 4 years to go to get to pension age and doesn't intend to carry on working.

Her forecast on the gov site give her weekly/monthly forecast and says, 'You cannot improve your forecast any more.'

Does that mean that she doesn't have to carry on paying NI through voluntary contributions, or are we misreading it?

Many thanks...

To answer your original question, voluntary NI is not compulsory. She gets her pension without it. However, for the sake of less than an hour on hold, ring Future Pensions and ask whether ‘cannot improve’ is true or not (in my case it was not). Ask about each remaining year. On a separate matter, if voluntary NI is worth her paying, look at the cost difference between Class 2 and Class 3 and think creatively …

molerat

jouef said:

Jon_01 said:

My wife's just left her job. She has 4 years to go to get to pension age and doesn't intend to carry on working.

Her forecast on the gov site give her weekly/monthly forecast and says, 'You cannot improve your forecast any more.'

Does that mean that she doesn't have to carry on paying NI through voluntary contributions, or are we misreading it?

Many thanks...

To answer your original question, voluntary NI is not compulsory. She gets her pension without it. However, for the sake of less than an hour on hold, ring Future Pensions and ask whether ‘cannot improve’ is true or not (in my case it was not). Ask about each remaining year. On a separate matter, if voluntary NI is worth her paying, look at the cost difference between Class 2 and Class 3 and think creatively …

But you were in a niche situation with your forecast showing "checking" years, something that is pretty well known on here and generally only applies to people who were self employed at some time.  Those years are invisible to the system, they don't exist as far as the forecast is concerned.  Saying that everyone should contact DWP / HMRC to get every year checked is a bit scare mongering and could bring down the already fragile telephone system.  So for clarity, if you have years shown as checking and do not have a full pension entitlement then contact HMRC to check on the status of those years, everyone does not need to call.

1957DfurdPensionist

molerat said:

If the top green box and the only amount in the text below are the same along with that statement then yes, she needs do no more.

Sounds like this riddle device might yield the right answer, but it is not our responsibility to keep enquiry lines clear when this VC 5 April special deadline is fast approaching.  If the government does not extend it again then with the still "fragile" nature of the telephone enquiry services, it is perhaps a sad fact that there will still be thousands who have been wrong-footed by the format of the ambigous Green Box forecast much unchanged since the beta of 2016.  As we discussed in another thread, there have even been periods when it wasn't used, but seemingly it was then reintroduced and is still in use? As I am now past SPa, and deferred, online info and even telephone enquiry is further drastically limited (no more access to forecasts or Future Pension Centre once you're past it!)  Back in late 2016 I got one of the earliest online forecasts with a big Green Box when it had a disclaimer on it that warned it was a beta service.  In my case, that one had the same number in the big green box as in the bottom green background line in the remaining text, with the following tag £XXX.xx is the most you can get.  But it did have a lower number in the middle which I should have taken in 2016 as an early warning that I would have to put in a lot of VC's if I had stopped working before SPa. So please be careful.

jouef

molerat said:

jouef said:

Jon_01 said:

My wife's just left her job. She has 4 years to go to get to pension age and doesn't intend to carry on working.

Her forecast on the gov site give her weekly/monthly forecast and says, 'You cannot improve your forecast any more.'

Does that mean that she doesn't have to carry on paying NI through voluntary contributions, or are we misreading it?

Many thanks...

To answer your original question, voluntary NI is not compulsory. She gets her pension without it. However, for the sake of less than an hour on hold, ring Future Pensions and ask whether ‘cannot improve’ is true or not (in my case it was not). Ask about each remaining year. On a separate matter, if voluntary NI is worth her paying, look at the cost difference between Class 2 and Class 3 and think creatively …

But you were in a niche situation with your forecast showing "checking" years, something that is pretty well known on here and generally only applies to people who were self employed at some time.  Those years are invisible to the system, they don't exist as far as the forecast is concerned.  Saying that everyone should contact DWP / HMRC to get every year checked is a bit scare mongering and could bring down the already fragile telephone system.  So for clarity, if you have years shown as checking and do not have a full pension entitlement then contact HMRC to check on the status of those years, everyone does not need to call.

Over 4 million people are self employed. So over, say, the last ten years there could well be 6 to 8 million who have come in and out of self employment at some time, many perhaps with other jobs or pensions. Hardly niche. Until recently I had a "checking" year showing in the 1970s [edit: long before I was ever self-employed]! The system having years invisible to the forecast while at the same time saying you cannot improve it, hardly inspires confidence so I'm not sorry for scare-mongering. The helpline had reasonable hold times and the staff were knowledgeable, patient and friendly. Their back-office IT is evidently letting them down by lying to its customers.