To be shocked if this is true . State pension and benefits …?

[Springtimesoo]

I have worked all my life apart from
4 year degree( 3 year plus prof qualification )
and
a period at home when I had 2 dc under two and we could not afford nursery fees.

have just checked my pension forcast Which says that although I have paid 35 years in full , i will not get a full pension .

it seems that to get a full pension i need to pay just over 3k .

my friend , who is by choice long term unemployed. ( long story) says that she will get a full pension as she is on benefits .

how is that fair ? Its not true is it ?

@Ginmonkeyagain As well as the increasing numbers of retirees, we don’t die off as early! The pension bill must be enormous and growing. Another change that will also impact is the higher reliance on benefits than with previous feneratiins, and the rise in single person households. Two modest pension incomes make for a reasonable life, but I’m dreading trying to manage on one if DH goes first. He’d be even worse off if he was left, as his private pension never amounted to much due to illness curtailing his ability to build it up.

Ha some NEST pensions have performed extremely badly & people don't have a clue how much you need in a pension pot to give a £5k or £6k yearly private pension & if you re in a low paid/nmw job, it will take forever to get this amount plus, as they are stock market based, are not guaranteed.

They also are not compulsory, anyone can opt out, once in it.

I called up HMRC a few years ago to pay my missing years (due to uni and a gap year and the gentleman I spoke to advised me NOT to top up, but instead to set up a savings account with the missing payments. Said I’d be better off

I was meaning it purely in terms of pensions and as a contrast to those who contracted out and are saying it is unfair and they've lost out. If I'd contracted out prior to 2016 then I'd still hit full state pension yeara before retirement, and have additional private pension benefits resulting from the same contributions.

So from that perspective those who contracted out might be better off

National Insurance isn't insurance. It is a tax. No more, no less.

Wjat you are entitled to are benfits not pay outs or a "pot"

The name is just a sleight of hand by government to get public buy in to paying it.

@Schnooze and @PoliticallylLost

Both - I don't think this, I know it. And it's actually 42 years!

I checked this morning to be sure. To date I have paid 40 years of full NI contributions.

To get the maximum state pension I still need to make two more years of contributions before April of the year in which I reach State Pension age. I have quite a few years to go, so plenty of time to do this!

So in all I will have paid 42 years of contributions to get the maximum new State Pension, not 35. This will be because I was contracted out of the additional state pension.

Many (maybe most, but probably depends on how old you are?) people who were contracted out of the additional state pension will need to pay more than 35 years of full contributions to get the new full state pension.

Yes it is a tax, but some of the benefits are only payable if a certain situation arises, so it is a tax that fulfils an insurance function.

A member of my family became suddenly and severely disabled in their late 50s. This allowed them to access benefits that the would not normally have had access to.

In fact that these benefits were means tested, and that they repeatedly had to undergo "fitness to work tests", and then appeal against these decisions. They were also subject to arbitrary sanctions for minor form filling errors, being unable to attend meetings on time etc. These took hours on the phone to sort out. However, this is all aother story........

This explains why some people will need to make more than 35 years worth of contributions to get the maximum pension:

rtsfinancialplanning.co.uk/why-you-might-not-get-a-full-state-pension-even-with-35-years-national-insurance-contributions/

I'm afraid this article just adds to confusion. People were contracted out of SERPS / second state pension.

@Sceptic1234 yes because there a contributions based and income based benefits. The former depends on you having made NI contributions for a certain amount of time but that does not mean the amount of NI you paid has anything to do with what you get - it is jsut the fact you paid it.

When I was made redundant a few years ago I was eligible for contributions based JSA for 6 months on account of my NI contributions. It was the same amuont as income based JSA, but it just meant for 6 months my savings and partners income were disregarded and I didn't really get a lot of pressure from the job centre to look for work. I did look for work obviously.

Fundamentally disagree.

To get a pension pot that would give you a guaranteed (at present rate) £10k per year pension would require a 300k pension pot at least, currently the SP as a triple lock increase too, the downside is it dies with you but otherwise is there for as long as you live and is not means tested.

Someone on MW would never accrue that sort of pension by any other means.

State benefits just don't do this, incredible value for money.

Given our aging population, no Govt is going to get rid of it or stop increasing the SP.

Its insurance because on set age, we get the pension, yes that age has changed but we vote for that, we know the Tories will increase it to 68, so can vote accordingly if we wish.

Yes and that is why they may need to pay more than 35 years contributions to get the full amount of the new state pension!

I am one of the people who will have to pay more than 35 years NI contributions due to being contracted out. No complaints as I understand that I will have benefitted through my occupational pension pot instead. Person I spoke to at the Furlture Pensions Centre was really helpful advising exactly how many years I could make up and how much I would benefit - I will break even in less than 4 years once claiming my state pension. He also let me know that the cost for each year - currently £824.20 for me - will be going up around 10% after 5th April 2023 due to inflation, so if anyone is planning to make up gaps and has the funds available, then it is advantageous to do it before 5th April.

I have never received any advice like that and I don't think it is in their remit to do so. I did receive help as to how many gaps i had and he told me how many i needed to pay back to get the full pension but not all of them. This was fact and not his opinion.

My FA and I worked out that in 3 years I would recoup the amount paid to them. I posted about this above. The triple lock protection ( while admittedly frozen last year) will benefit you greatly compared to money sitting in a savings account. My pension will raise by 10.1% in April.

Why is your state pension only £90? Were there NI credits you failed to claim? If you were working which I assume you were to earn a private pension this seems low. And how much is your modest occupational pension? If it is less than £47 PW you would still qualify for pension credit.

I’ve managed to get back into the gateway this morning. I have 38 years of full payments and 1 year of incomplete (not sure why as I had full years before and after whilst I was still in education). I need one more year to get full state pension but will probably be contributing for a further 12 years. I’ve only been in uninterrupted full time employment (so actually paying NI contributions from my salary) for 34 years.

but if the state pension forecast indicates that @Schnooze is on track to receive £185 she should believe it

yes there is a contract, the law of the land (contracts don't always need to be signed)

This is absolute nonsense.

I think more people are gradually waking up to this and the oft used. 'benefit bashing' response is losing some of its gilt edged beyond reproach golden silencer effect.

And about bloody time. For every one who genuinely can't work, there is one taking the piss.

The usual response to this is some prissy, 'How do you know? Please quote your source'

Well, I know because I have the evidence of my own eyes.

The response to this is usually, 'many disabilities are often hidden and you just don't know individual circumstances.

Well, I have my own common sense to back up the judgement of my eyes and luckily, it seems that more people are also discovering that they have the same.

OP, do your sums here. Remember that state pension increases with inflation. You might be happy to hold back that money now, but if you live 15 years or more you will be way out of pocket.

Could it have been because clarasita was so young that she would end up paying more than the necessary years by the time she retired anyway. Eg I had missing early years in my teens but now I'm in my 60s I have 44 qualifying years and entitled to full state pension (even with 13 years contracted out) so it would have been a waste of my money to pay those missing years previously🤷

Care to explain why?

Bullshit.

The number of long term unemployed people in the UK is a tiny tiny percentage and amounts to around 270k people.

The myth of all those many millions of long term.i employed is a media driven propaganda to push the narrative.of benefit claimants being Scroungers and cause division between the haves and have nots.

And unlike the people.amkong wild claims, there's plenty of sources with actual figures. www.statista.com/statistics/284187/uk-unemployment-figures-by-length/#:~:text=Number%20of%20people%20unemployed%20in,2022%2C%20by%20length%20of%20unemployment&text=As%20of%20December%202022%2C%20there,for%20more%20than%20a%20year.

Silversalt The 21 years is based on a lower retirement age. Retirement age is now 68, most women do not live until 89

This is what people don't understand about life expectancy. The figure of 82 for women and 79 for men is the life expectancy from birth.

Only people get to retirement age their life expectancy is much older.

See below life expectancy of 65 yo UK women is 21 extra years.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/life-expectancy-at-older-ages-is-the-highest-its-ever-beenn*

Yes vast majority of the 1.2m people unemployed are just churn, they are not the same people.

There are approx 2.5m on long term sick and economically in active, there are 7m people on waiting lists for medical treatment.

Its a very high bar to claim sickness benefit and be expected to not work at all.

On "common sense" whose Common Sense? everybody's definition of CS is very different.

@pissssedofff NI is a tax - it pays for all sorts of things. State pensions aren't paid out of some kind of special NI pot you contriute to, it is just another tab on the big book of stuff government uses out taxes to pay for.

Yes you are right the state pension is a good deal for very low earners in terms of what they put in, but that doesn't mean it is not a benefit. If it behaved like an acutal pension higher rate tax payers would get a hell of a lot more than £185 a week!