Underpaid pension?

trustymagnet

Any ideas please?  I retired in 2020 at the age of 66.  I have been aware for some time that I am not getting the full pension amount (currently about £90 every 4 weeks less than full rate).  I do not understand why.  I have 33 years full pension until 2008 and then I became self employed.  I have a whole year- 2008/09- with no credits at all and 37 weeks of credit of the 2009/10 year.  I then have another 9 years full years from 2010 to 2019.  I understand that the last year before retirement is not counted - is this correct? During the whole time I was self employed I had a certificate to protect my pension credits.  So I don't understand what has gone wrong because even if you discount those 2 years I still have 42 years of contributions. thanks

la531983

Have you logged in to see how many years you needed?

Ayr_Rage

Were you in any other pension scheme?

If that was a contracted-out scheme you may have needed several more years to get the full state pension.

I needed over 48 to get the full whack.

If you are thinking that 35 is the magic number, that only applies to those who started accumulating years from April 2016 (born this century).

molerat

With those numbers you were in a contracted out pension scheme at some time, so you should be receiving that pension, which means your starting amount was under the old rules and you needed post 2016 years to increase your pension but there were not enough available to reach the full amount.  You are not alone, there are many of us who were contracted out and reached retirement "too early" to get the full amount.

It is not the year before retirement that doesn't count but the tax year in which you reach retirement.  Your on line NI record will show if there are any fillable gaps which can now only be 19-20.  On a positive note those 2 empty / part filled years had no effect on your pension (as did none of your self employed years 2015-16 and earlier).