Uk state pensions: please explain voluntary contributions to me!

[Watchagotch72]

I confess to being quite head in the sand about this. My situation is that I studied then worked in the UK for about 10 years. Since then, I’ve worked / been a SAHM in various other countries. I’ve read on various forums that I ‘should’ look at ‘buying back missed years’ to somehow qualify for uk state pension in the future. I’m British.

I’ve had a look on the HMRC site, seen all the missing years etc. And it looks like I would have to pay many thousands £££ before the 2025 deadline. How do I know if it is worth it? I’m 50 now.

thanks if anyone has advice / experience of this.

You need 10 years of payments to get any state pension. You can check the number of years you have through govt gateway. Clearly if you nine years you would get nothing so it’s worth paying the extra year. Whether it’s worth paying more depends on how many years you need to pay and I think there’s a limit on how far back you can go and it may cost extra to buy those years.
i worked in the uk and then lived overseas and have paid voluntary contributions for over 20 years and will get a full state pension.

When I contacted HMRC about possible backdated payments, I was told I should contact the Pension Service first, who could tell me whether it was worth while making the payments. In my case it was, but I only had 4 or 5 missing years. There are limits to how far back you can pay, the Pension Service ought to be able to tell you which ones apply to your situation.

https://www.gov.uk/contact-pension-service

I live abroad and pay as well. I had 18 years worth when I started and probably won’t get to the 35 years worth to qualify for full pension but think it will be pro rated and am ok with this.

In order to decide if it was worth it I found out how much I had to pay for each years contribution and how much this would give me in state pension ( rough example around £750 for a year would give me around £6600 of pension - very rough figures I can’t remember exactly and because they are different now). So find out what state pension is now, and how much you would pay for each year ( think mine is now around 800). And then decide if you think it’s worth it. Of course it depends upon on when you pop before you get it at all or only get a few years, it but I was being optimistic 😀

Definitely contact the pension service. Only took me ten minutes to get through on Friday. Found out we ven though I have missing years prior to 2018, it was not worth paying those as I had already accumulated the thirty required up to that point. Then the rules changed, and you need thirty five, but only from 2018. Also I had contracted out for a time, but also been in receipt of child payments when I was a SAHM, but still got the NI paid.

So complicated! I now have 10 years to either pay 3 extra, or work for a further 3 to get my full pension.

Well worth the call.