A financial expert has claimed people could get £5,000 extra State Pension for just £800.
By making voluntary National Insurance contributions, Brits could get a 587% return on their investments.
You pay mandatory National Insurance if you’re 16 or over and are either an employee earning above £184 a week or self-employed and making a profit of £6,515 or more a year.
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But if you have gaps in your National Insurance contributions, you may be able to pay a voluntary amount.
You may have gaps because you were employed but had low earnings, unemployed and were not claiming benefits, self-employed but did not pay contributions because of small profits or living or working outside the UK.
But gaps can mean you will not have enough years of National Insurance contributions to get the full State Pension.
The maximum entitlement requires 35 years of qualifying National Insurance (NI) contributions for the full State Pension, or 30 years for the old one.
There are two options if you have a shortfall. The first is to claim NI credits to cover any period when you were unable to work and claimed benefits such as Working Tax Credits, Jobseeker’s Allowance and Universal Credit, or were raising a family or acting as a carer.
Andrew Tully, technical director at Canada Life, said these should have been given automatically.
He told the Express : “If unsure, check, as they can be backdated.”
In some cases, people have to actively claim NI credits, including those on Carer’s Allowance who cared for between 20 and 35 hours a week.
If you do not qualify for NI credits, you can plug gaps in your contributions record by making Class 3 voluntary NI contributions instead, says Becky O’Connor, head of pensions and savings at Interactive Investor.
You have to pay for these but she said: “This is still well worth looking into as the return on investment can be astonishing.”
Class 3 voluntary NI contributions can plug the State Pension shortfall for those who were employed but had low earnings.
They can also make up any shortfall for people who were unemployed but did not claim benefits, and the self-employed who did not pay contributions because they only made small profits.
Those living or working outside the UK could also bolster their State Pension in the same way.
Voluntary Class 3 payments cost £15.40 a week, which adds up to £800.80 a year, O’Connor says. “Each additional qualifying year that you generate will add 1/35th of state pension, which on the new State Pension is around £5.29 a week from April 6, or £275.08 a year.”
That gives you £825.24 over the first three years, which means you have effectively got your money back. "Over the course of the typical 20-year retirement, you could get £5,501.60 in total extra State Pension. That’s an incredible return of 587%.”
However, this depends on how long you live after drawing your State Pension. Those who die relatively early will get a smaller return, which means those in poor health should think twice before buying an extra pension.
There are also limits on the amount of extra State Pension you can buy, Ms O’Connor says. “You can usually only make voluntary NI payments for gaps in the previous six years.”
You can visit the government portal on Gov.uk to check your NI record, see if you are eligible to make voluntary contributions, and how much it will cost. Or contact the Future Pension Centre on 0800 731 0175.
Be warned, buying extra years could backfire if you lose other state benefits as a result. If on a low income in retirement, check your eligibility for Pension Credit instead, which increases a single pensioner’s income to £177.10 a week or £270.30 a week for couples.
You don't have to pay anything to get Pension Credit, yet a million of the poorest pensioners fail to claim it.
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