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Here’s how the State Pension works and how to get the full amount

Your State Pension is a regular payment paid out by the Government once you’ve hit your State Pension age (which is currently 66 but is slowly increasing). It could allow you to stop working earlier or wind down the amount you work in later years.

You might think that it’s pointless to care about it until you’re approaching retirement, but there are important questions you should ask, such as how much you’ll get, what age you’d be getting it, and whether you’re even eligible.

When can you get the State Pension?

To start, let’s go back to basics. The State Pension is a guaranteed weekly income paid to you when you reach the State Pension age. You can, of course, retire earlier if you have other income sources or other pensions, but you don’t get this cash until you hit the State Pension age.

The State Pension age is 66 and it’ll keep rising — first to 67 between 2026 and 2028, impacting those born after 1960 and then to 68 years old. This latter change is meant to happen around 2044 (adding a year for those born around 1977) but could occur up to 10 years earlier between 2035 and 2039 (meaning those born after 1968).

Though of course, these ages could – and probably will – change again. I imagine I’ll be 69 when my time comes. And, it’s anticipated that anyone currently under 30 will have to wait until 70 years old to get the payments. Indeed, in 30 years there might not even be a State Pension at all anymore!

How to find out your State Pension age

The way to find out what the date will be (as things stand now) is for you is to use the State Pension age tool on the Gov.UK website.

You simply enter your date of birth and whether you’re male or female (gender only makes a difference to people already in their mid-60s) and ta-da, you’ll see your State Pension age.

Quick note – as the earlier increase to 68 is just a proposal it’s not been factored into the calculator, so add a year if you were born after 1968 to be on the safe side.

Why you should care about your State Pension now

So you now know when you’ll get it, and it could well be a long time until you reach State Pension age. Hey, for me it’s at least another 25 years! So we can forget about it until then, right?

No – there are important reasons I care now, and you should too.

It reduces how much you’ll need in your other pensions

The full amount from the State Pension might not seem much – currently just £221.20* a week and going up to £230.30 per week in April 2025.

That’s £11,502.40 per year until you die (or £11,975.60 after April 2025). If you live for 20 years after your State Pension age then it’s worth more than £230,000.

Say you’ve worked out you need £30,000 a year to live when you retire, the full State Pension means you’ll only actually need to save enough to cover £18,000 a year from your State Pension Age. That’s a much easier (and less scary) total to target.

* How much you get can get a little complicated so this is the most. I won’t go into detail here but you’ll get less if you ever “contracted out”. Or if you would have been better off under the older system, it’s possible you might get small top-ups when you retire. 

You’re not automatically entitled to it

But, you don’t automatically qualify for the State Pension. You might think it just starts when you hit the State Pension age, but you’re wrong. You need to make at least 10 years of National Insurance contributions to qualify. Less than this and you won’t get anything.

You generally make National Insurance contributions through your pay, or you might get National Insurance credits through things like child benefit, jobseekers allowance, carers allowance and maternity leave.

You might not get the full amount

That 10-year figure is the minimum. You’ll need as many as 35 years of National Insurance contributions to get the full amount. But, depending on your age, it could be a little less – more on this later. It’s well worth making sure you have made or will make enough contributions to reach this number.

If you only qualify for two-thirds of the full amount (roughly what you’d get if you only made 24 out of 35 years of full contributions) then you’d be around £3,900 worse off a year. That will make a difference.

I’ve detailed further down the article how you can check your current status and how much you’d get (at current figures).

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You might have missed some years

If you’ve been working or on certain benefits each year since school or University (or even before) then it’s likely you’ll have each year so far marked on your record as full. But if for any reason you took time out – a gap year perhaps – you’ll have a missing year.

And the closer you get to retirement, the bigger the impact any missed year will have on how much you get. But if the missed year is within the last six years you can voluntarily pay to top it up.

Of course, if you’ve got plenty of years to catch up you might not need to do this, but it’s worth thinking about if you’re approaching the time you’d like to stop working.

You won’t want to be making future contributions if you retire early

Do you want to keep working until you actually reach the State Pension age? If you can afford to retire earlier it makes sense to ensure you don’t have to keep making (voluntary) contributions when your income is low, in order to get the max State Pension available to you.

Say you’re aiming to quit in 10 years at 55 years old but have 23 years of contributions so far. You’ll either need to change your goal to 57 years old, or you’ll need to make voluntary contributions for another 2 years to reach the magic number of 35 years of contributions.

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How many qualifying years do you need?

Under the new system (introduced in April 2016), you qualify for the State Pension after 10 years of contributions and will get the full rate after 35 years of contributions (this is for men born after 1951 and women born after 1953).

But as I mentioned above, it’s not going to be 35 years for everyone – it could actually be less. This is despite pretty much every major newspaper and personal finance website stating it’s now 35 years for everyone. It’s not! And I’m proof of this.

If you started making contributions before April 2016, which is going to be most people in their late 20s and some younger – the total number of years is based on a mix of the new and old systems.

For me, I only need to make a total of 30 years of full National Insurance contributions. For my wife, it’s 32 years. This is despite the fact we’ve both already contributed the same number of years so far.

A few years ago I called up the HMRC helpline to find out why this was and why so many sources reported a blanket 35 years. The answer wasn’t massively clear, but it might be down to me being a little older than her, or me earning more in some of those years. Whatever the reason, we’re both examples of people who need to pay less than 35 years – so it could well be the same for you.

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How to check your State Pension record

There’s a way to check how much State Pension you’ll get when you retire, based on your current record and also if you continue paying in. You’ll also be able to see if there are any gaps.

It’s a five-minute job well worth doing so you know if you’re on track, or whether you need to take action now – and if you’re over 40 you may well need to fill in any missing gaps.

You need to request a State Pension forecast. It’s easy and doesn’t take long. You need a Government Gateway ID, and it might take five to 10 minutes to set this up. You need to validate your identity using your passport or a recent payslip, but once sorted you can find out how many years you still need to contribute to get the full amount.

In the same system, you can check your National Insurance record. You’ll see how many years you’ve already made full contributions. Add those figures and you’ll get the total number of years that you need to pay.

This page will also tell you how many more years you have left to make contributions – i.e. before you reach the State Pension age.

See if you can top-up your State Pension

Though you’ll keep gaining qualifying years when you work or claim certain benefits, you can also pay money now to fill in some gaps. This is meant to be limited to the past six years, but an increased time frame has been extended a few times.

You’ve got until 05 April 2025 (extended from the original 5 April 2023 deadline) to make back payments. This extension is for men born since April 1951 and women after April 1953. If that’s you, you can top up as far back as April 2006.

There’s a cost to any top-up – roughly £824 per full year if you do it in 2025. This is a sizeable amount, but for each year you add now, you’ll break even if you claim the State Pension for at least three years. So claim it for four years and you’ll be better off.

If you’re self-employed, then you’ll need to pay less per missing year to make it a qualifying credit. There are different rates for this.

Broadly, this isn’t going to be worth it for those under the age of 45, and probably a good few years after that. But the closer you get to state retirement age, the more likely it is you could benefit from a top-up rather than missing out on the full amount or having to keep working for longer.

Of course, those who are able to get free credits from things like missing child benefit or other benefits, should make sure they claim those to help fill any gaps.

You’ll probably want to contact the Future Pension Service on 0800 731 0175 before making any overpayments as they can advise on whether you need to. There have been huge backlogs and delays getting through (hence the extensions), so keep trying.

Alternatively, if you’re sure you want to go ahead, some might be able to make the payments via their government gateway account – it’ll show as an option when you check your current NI record.