Pension Shortfall

[sammmo]

My wife was born in 1956 and is one of the woman who’s pension has been bumped up from 60 to 66. She was made redundant 4 yrs ago. So she started to draw on her personal final salary pension and topped it up with savings, and she thought she was getting her pension at the age of 62 but she’s got to wait until 66. I checked her pension today and she has 43 full yrs NI contributions. 3 yrs where she hasn’t paid enough and 4 yrs where she can still contribute.the most she can get as pension is £164.35 but it’s estimated that she will get £146.71p ..
My questions are. If we paid the shortfall which is approx £733 per yr would it definitely increase the pension. And shouldn’t she qualify for national insurance credits to make up these final 7 years. Thanks

[Buenchico]

I've never fully understood exactly how the rules work (- and I've got a degree in maths!). So I'm not going to attempt to give you a definitive answer directly.

However last year I was in a roughly similar situation myself (as my State Pension was due from April of this year), with the online information showing a discrepancy between the maximum I might get and the estimate of what I'd actually get. I'd got some years with partial contribution gaps (in some cases needing no more than about £50 in voluntary payments to bring them up to 'full' years), so I was keen to see if making some fairly small voluntary contributions would increase my State Pension.

So I phoned TPAS to see if I could get a definitive answer. My previous experience of phoning the helplines of government agencies (e.g. with benefit enquiries) made me expect to end up on hold for several hours and then to end up speaking to a so-called advisor who couldn't answer my questions anyway. However I was pleased to get through very quickly to an exceptionally helpful guy, who could give me definitive answers to my questions straight away.

So perhaps a call to TPAS could also help in your wife's case?
https://www.gov.uk/pensions-advisory-service

[Gizmonster]

I'm confused.
Your wife was born after 6th April 1953, which means she'll be claiming the new state pension (women born before this date claim the basic state pension).
To qualify for the full amount of £164.35 per week, she'll need 35 full years contributions; yet you say she has 43 full years ????

As Chris said, I think a quick phone cal is in order .....

[Peter Pedant]

yeah I can echo the ring TPAS advice line
getting it wrong here - can cost you money
and yes there are circs when contributing a bit more does diddly squat to your pension
The rules are complicated - I get less than that as my employer contracted out of S2P - oh and you are in transition

[fiction-factory]

Yes, I think that her occupational pension was probably contracted out so that now affects the new state pension such that she may not get the maximum. Complicated business. Worth a call. Also worth checking all years are in there. I checked mine and found a missing year when i was doing a full time education course so i asked for- and got- a credit. Check also that years not working when claiming child benefit are shown