How can I make this work re Nat Insurance contributions

[ImDoneBeingNice]

I have 2 jobs.

Job A - I work 3 days a week on average and earn about £1200 a month and pay NI from here, pension paid.

Job B - zero hour contract. I earn about £400 a month from this.

I am trying to increase job B, as I love it, whereas Job A is pretty grim. I am looking to just work every other weekend in Job A, and earn about £385.00. I will build up Job B.

However, I obviously need to pay NI as I have only 5 years left to pay to meet the 35 years to get the full pension.

The potential NI inconsistency is the only thing holding me back on making the full leap to my dream job. It is zero hours, but apparently do put you on a contract over a certain amount of hours.

If you earn £129 a week you should get NI credits even though you don't pay NI until you hit £242 a week (£1048per month). If you don't earn enough you can top up with class 3 but that could be expensive if you need more than a few weeks. Depends a bit how far off state pension age you are. Assume you have checked your record as you may not need 35 years to qualify.

Start by getting a state pension forecast https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension

The key thing is the Lower Earnings Limit https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/rates-and-allowances-national-insurance-contributions/rates-and-allowances-national-insurance-contributions

In 2026/27 if you earn more than £129 per week this counts towards your pension even though you don’t start paying NI until you earn £242 per week.

Each year if you earn 52 x the LEL it counts towards your pension. If you only partly meet this you can pay to top it up to a full year.

HTH