Any National Insurance experts here? Pls can you help with this Q.

[Hanakotoba]

I have a part time job, and earn about £1,200 a month. I pay NI on this. I have had my head down and been clocking up my state pension contributions as I am short by 5 years and hurtling towards 60.

I want to give up my PT job and concentrate on something else, which means I won't be paying NI for a few months whilst I build it up to a decent income.

I have read online that if I have earned over the threshold for triggering NI (£6709.00) then it will count as a year's contribution, even if I have only paid e.g. 7 months out of 12 months. I read that it is not something that you need to pay every month, you just need to get over the threshold.

If this is the case then that makes my life a lot easier as under my new career, I may work more months than others, and once I hit the threshold I will not need to worry about it.

Is this information correct? I put it through AI, but I'd rather ask someone on here.

I thought you just had to pay NI every month, for 12 months and if you missed a month, that was it, it doesn't count as a year, and it is not credited towards your state pension.

Have a look at the website Low Income Tax Reform Group. It explains things like this really well. It's not just total earnings for the year but weekly earnings you need to look at. The website explains it better than I could.

I'm not an expert but in the tax year 2001/2002 I only worked for about seven months, and some of that was part time, but according to HMRC I have full contributions for that year.

That was a long time ago though, so things may have changed.