Confused about NI contributions and pension

[LaPetite]

Hi,

I've seen a few posts on MN about NI, gaps and state pension so I decided to check mine and now I'm a bit confused about it.

I was born in 1980 and according to HMRC I have 23 years in contributions and I'm missing 3 years (2 at uni when I didn't earn enough, 1 living overseas).

So I assumed I would need to make another 12 years of contributions, but my pension forecast says I need another 10 years to get the full state pension. So now I'm confused about why I would only need to make 33 years worth of contributions when I thought the minimum was 35 years.

Also, I thought that you could only get NI credits through claiming child benefit if you had a child under 12, but my youngest is now 14 and it looks like I'm still getting NI credits as well as my contributions from working.

So... Anyway anyone know what's going on or anyone else the same as me?

Posting a couple of screenshots to show what I mean.

Sorry, posting and running because I'm meant to be doing stuff now, but will be back later.

Thanks in advance.

Well NI contributions and NI credits are two different things, so it might be (I can’t say for sure) that yiu have 23 years full conts from employment and the other 2 from credits? It’s hard to know without looking at each tax year but yiu should be able to open them up in your account. Don’t know about the credits from CHB though.

It’s a myth that we all need 35 years. That only applies to people who started paying NI from 2016. The rest of us need differing amounts depending on contracting out etc.

That might be the case (some people who started employment before 2016 but who reach SP age after that need more than 35 years to get max new SP if they contracted out, but the occ pen they get from contracting out is meant to balance out the difference). That said the OP is showing her NI record which clearly says that she needs 10 more QYs to get max new SP (that won’t take into account any contracting out figure though which is where any deficit in your actual SP entitlement might be when it’s actually calculated). and to get max new SP you need 35 QYs. All that said, if you were born in 1980 you’ve got 24 more years to make up to max SP so if you’re working (or getting credits from other sources eg benefits) I don’t think you need to worry whether you need 12 or 10 more years to be honest.

Thanks for your replies.

I've checked and apparently I was contracted out but it must have been for a very short time because it gives me 30p a week.

Yes, it doesn't really matter if I need another 10 or 12 years of pension contributions. Either way I'm still going to have to keep working till retirement age (or claim benefits if for some reason I can't work). I was just a bit confused by it.