To remind you to check your pension contributions before April 2025.

It’s to check your NI contributions have been correctly recorded. If not it’s much easier to resolve now than in 20 years time.

It also shows if you have a part year and the cost to making it a full year.

You don’t have to be paid the child benefit and pay it back to get ni credit. If you originally claimed but now opted not to have the money that will still count. The issue is where someone never put in a claim for child benefit so they are not within the system. Does this explain your situation?

Thank you so much op for the reminder to look into this. I wonder if anyone could advise me - I've been unemployed for nearly 3yrs as a SAHM. We don't claim child benefit as DH over the earning threshold. I know I should be to get stamps paid, and then pay it back, but have never gotten round to sorting it.

I went in to my gateway account there on your prompt and it said I have the full year in these recent years - that can't be right can it? Haven't claimed any benefits.

It’s not worth it is she plans on working for the foreseeable future. She is only 30 she has another 38 years till retirement. Once she has the required number of years she can’t improve her pension further but if she’s working she will still continue to pay ni but those years will not count as she already has enough. If she can get enough by the years she is going to work it’s not worth paying voluntary. It’s only worth it when you are running out of years to work before your retirement date and are short on qualifying years

Thankyou I've just checked and all maxed so on track to get full pension .

Before you do anything you should check your forecast on the government gateway.

Can someone explain this to me like I'm an idiot (I obviously am!)?

I'm late 30s and missed some contributions in my late teens/early 20s. Should I definitely pay them now or can I pay them later than April? I feel so embarrassed that I don't know about pensions even though I contribute to a private one through work, I'm just hoping I'll be ok!

Yes, for most people who are unable to work for any reason they would be likely to get NI credits as long as they claimed the appropriate benefit - claiming child benefit (even if no payment made), carer's allowance, carer's credit, Universal Credit, new style ESA, JSA will all contribute to NI credits. So the numbers of people who stop work and don't qualify for any of those won't be that many.

I've checked my NI record and I have a full record although only 3 years were from employment - the rest have been from child benefit or carer's allowance (and the child benefit will cover me for the rest of the contributions I will ever need as my youngest is 2).

Also worth to note, the government gateway only shows the online make up payments of class 3 NI. Depending on your circumstances, you may be eligible to only pay class 2. Difference is @ 860 vs @ £180 per year.
If you are eligible to pay class 2, you need to phone them and they will send a statement and an amount to pay.

Have you actually checked your forecast. SERPs was in relation to the 2nd state pension which doesn't exist for current workers. The new state pension is what you will get. Your forecast will tell you what you are at just now amd how many more years to get the full amount. Opting put of the second state pension just meant that you paid the money to a private / workplace pension so the amount that you would have got in second state pension will come from your private/ workplace arrangement.

Not everyone needs 35 years some need less some need more. It is only people that started paying after 2016 that need an exact 35 years.
The government gateway will that will say you can't increase your forecast anymore when you get to that point.
I wouldn't advise anyone not to worry because the will get pension credit. Pension credit wouldn't be available to most people who are working now. If you work and are auto enrolled in a pension scheme you would very likely be over the threshold for pension credit if you get almost the full state pension.

I'd love to, but HMRC haven't told the pensions side that I have paid tax/ni for the last 3 years so don't have a clue.

Pretty pissed off that I won't get a full pension despite paying in for 40years because I opted out of surps, but someone starting work tomorrow and only paying 35 years will. I've got 11 years of paying ni before I get a pension so that's 51years contribution and still won't get a full pension (yes I know that the money went into my private pension...but I have family who have NEVER had a job now getting a full pension)

Also, people claiming certain benefits including child benefit would have a stamp paid so it's not just 35 years of employment that count.

Providing care for someone, even if you don't qualify for Carers Allowance, can also mean a stamp is paid, something called Carers Credit. Equivalent to about £17 a week if you were to pay Class 3 stamp yourself.

Correct

For most people though, it should be unnecessary to top up NI contributions right? I believe only 35 years of contributions are needed, so most people in employment will hit that in their mid 50s or so, more than 10 years ahead of the state pension age.

Is my understanding correct?

I've checked my government gateway account and my forecast has 35 complete years (I'm 58 and started paying NI at 16 but recently have missed years).

A lot of these sites that encourage you to buy missing years, rarely point out that if you have the required 35 years of full contribution that it would be pointless to buy more (unless the government moves the goal posts). By the time I retire at 67, I will have probably have paid in 40 years of NI contributions.

For those that won't have 35 complete years, don't sweat it because you can claim pension credit (a form of welfare) to make up the shortfall.

Because the deadline has already been pushed back twice, at the moment it's April 2025 and then after that you would only be able to pay any missing years going back 6 years.
So it's a limited opportunity to pay for other years.

I understand the reason for the deadline being extended was that there wasn't a system set up for easy payments. It involved phoning a department, potentially being told to phone another department, getting a reference number etc, and basically not enough staff to actually provide the service.

I checked mine last year and plugged a gap (I worked abroad for a few years).
The uk.gov site is refreshingly straightforward.

Thanks OP, this feels like something people think we should all know, but we often don't.

Correct.

But when it changed from 30 to 35 years, DH went from being paid up to needing 6 more years.

Yeah that’s right. It’s not worth paying for gaps to be filled in that situation. It’s more relevant if you don’t have long enough left to work and have gaps.

Just checking that you know that you don't stop paying once you've got 35 years?

Correct

Correct, as long as you make NI contributions for 13 years.

Don’t worry you have loads of time after uni to gain enough years. It wouldn’t be cost effective to plug the gaps for those years.

Was a while ago I first checked but think you just need to create a government gateway account. It's here https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension