petition.parliament.uk/petitions/632807
I know it might seem like a lifetime away, but if you don't have at least 35 full years of National Insurance Contributions by the time you retire, you won't get the Full State Pension. There's a trap many will fall into so you need to act now. The Problem: If you pay anything less than the full 52 weeks of NI contributions in any year, that year is written off entirely (Eg. If you worked and paid NI contributions for 50 weeks, but took 2 weeks between jobs, you will lose that entire year from your record resulting in a smaller State Pension for the rest of your life). The problem will be made worse if you end up having several years written off in that way. It is possible for you to pay voluntary NI contributions to "repair" a year like that, and it's fairly cheap to do it (less than £16 for each missing week, so if you only missed 2 weeks, as in the example above, it would cost you less than £32 so the year isn't lost ... and each year will add £5.29 PER WEEK to your State Pension, for the rest of your life. THE BIG PROBLEM is that you are only permitted to make voluntary NI contributions to 'repair' gaps in the last 6 years, so if you start looking into this when you're in your 50's, but there are gaps from when you were in your 20s, 30s or 40s, there's nothing you can do about it. The gaps cannot be 'repaired' and you'll receive a smaller State Pension as a result. This is unfair - the Government have everyone's full NI Contributions history, so there's no excuse for leaving this trap in place.
The good news
- You are now aware of the trap and should check your State Pension Forecast every few years to see if there are gaps you can fix.
- For the time you are receiving Child Benefit, the Government will pay full NI contributions for you at no cost, so you don't need to worry about those years.
- By signing this petition, you will be helping to remove this unfair anomaly to ensure people you know and care about, who don't know about this trap don't fall into it before it's too late.
We need a lot of signatures on the petition to get the Government to even look at making this change, so after you've signed it yourself, could you pass the link and explanation to as many of your friends as possible.
Thank you for reading this right to the end ... both of you 😉