NI contributions

[AnyBenny]

I’ve been reading about the opportunity to top up any missing years of NI contributions by April this year (recently extended to July), so checked my record as I haven’t worked more than the odd freelance project since 2016 (doing graduate study).
To my surprise I have full contributions for those years, which is good from the point of view of my pension obviously). I was just wondering why this might be - I haven’t claimed benefits/child benefit, lived abroad or any of the other reasons it gives on the site.
It’s a bit of a mystery so I wondered if anyone could shed any light!

Do you have 35 years of contributions?

If you are completing Self Assessment tax returns for the freelance work, as self employed, I’d guess you were paying Class 2 NIC as part of those submissions.

@WeeFinbar I do do a self assessment tax return as I have a let property and some investment income so yes the freelance work went on there but the contributions were tiny (£100-200 p/a). Maybe my accountant was doing the Class 2 contributions as part of that - I need to dig out the return and check it.
@Mercurial123 - I have 30 years contributions so far.