Another Pension One

[m00rfarm]

As many other people have done, I checked my state pension last night. It said

You can get your state pension on xxxx 2030.
Your forecast is £252.27 a week
£1096.92 a month
£13,163.09 a year

£252.27 is the maximum you can get

All good.

And then I checked the area where you can top up missing amounts.

It told me that I could top up by paying around £3k.

What I am trying to work out is why I would need to top up if I am already on the maximum. There is no other "extra" that I can get by topping up? I have 40 years already of full payments - the missing ones are where I was not working in recent years!

I can't work out if they are being disingenuous by trying to get me to pay another £3k even though I don't need to, or whether I am going to miss out on some bonus scheme that appears if you overpay!

I think there are two separate formulae in there. The first page tells you if you have the necessary qualifying years to get the maximum amount, which you do.

The second tells you that you have years where you didn't pay enough to make them qualifying years, and £3k is the amount needed to top them up IF you needed them.

But you don't need them.

I have the same. I have a full state pension, 40 qualifying years and 2 non-qualifying years.

Ah - so you are not paying anything extra even though they say you can? Thank you - that is exactly what I needed to know.

I've just had a look at mine and then checked online, it says the maximum you can get is £221.20.

How do you get £252?

As a PP says, your amount is over the standard new State Pension maximum, which would indicate that when the calculations for the new state pension were done in 2016 you had a 'protected payment' as the result of you having previously been contracted in to SERPS or S2P.

You therefore cannot increase the amount further and there is no point in you voluntarily filling in any gaps (you'll still have to continue paying NI if you are working however).

Your State Pension explained - GOV.UK

Because that is the forecast for 2030. I typed it out word for word because I could not be hassled with doing the screen shot and then removing my name!

No. It will have been that amount (adjusted for the annual increases) since the new State Pension (nSP) was introduced in 2016. You had accumulated more that the nSP maximum at that point - presumably because you were contracted in to SERPS / S2P prior to that - and so have a 'protected payment'.

But you will not have been able to increase it further since that time, although you have to pay NI until you reach State Pension Age if you are earning enough.