Any advice on pensions or how to find out??

[CosmicG]

My mum turns 60 this year in September and has not worked at all for the last 10 yrs. She is desperately seeking working at the moment because she feels that unless she does, she will either not qualify for state pension or will get very little. I don't know if this is true. If she started working somewhere part time now (15hrs), is it really going to make much difference to how much she gets in her pension?? I don't know much about how state pensions work and i think she would qualify for it when she turns 65. Any advice?

How many years has she worked?

I think you need 30 full years of contributions at the moment, going up to 35 in the next few years.

I think you can apply to pay for more years, up to six I think, if she could afford it?

It is all about the NI contributions, which she can make without working at all.

Her first task is to ask for her personalised state pension forecast.

www.gov.uk/state-pension-statement

she will need to register for the government gateway and wait for some activation codes to arrive in the post.

I ran a rough pension age check for her, and she gets her pension in November 2017.

time for her to take control and find out her exact position.

caja No, she hasn't made ni contributions for a full 30 yrs.

Thanks special, very helpful.