Really irks me that they upped the qualifying age to 67 a couple of years ago. Makes a big difference to retirement planning🤬
Likely to be changing again, although most of us over 50 shouldn’t see much change hopefully, as above, if mine goes as it’s suggested it will only be another month. I suspect 20 year olds now will be working into their 70’s at this rate.
Although some suggestions to base it on work & where you live given life expectancy, and if you do a hard manual job for 40 years+ you could be pretty wrecked when you get to 60.
I basically lost 4 years when I was at Uni, and wouldn’t have paid any for the 2 years I was on my YTS!
On the subject of years of contributions, the following is something to watch out for (though I suspect most of you already know this). After yesterday’s conversation I logged onto the Government Gateway to check my situation. So on the first page it tells me that I still need to work for 4 more years to get my full state pension. However when I then look at my NI record it tells me that I have 38 years of full contributions. So even if I ignore the three years before I went to University this should give me 35 years since leaving University.
So what is going on? For me it looks like the answer lies in the fact that I was in a contracted out pension scheme for number of years. In fairness the website does tell me this so is almost certainly the reason why I still have four years still to go.
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Just checked mine and I have got 35 years of full contributions and only 16 years to go before I can claim 
My pension forecast states ‘is the most you can get
You cannot improve your forecast any more.’
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Just logged on & despite having been in full time employment since 1986 - & the gateway confirms this - I still have to contribute for 4yrs to get the forecasted max state pension.
I was an A-level student from 86-88 with a Saturday job so it only shows a couple of hundred quid of contributions but 52 Weeks of Credits each year. I’ve been full time since then and it shows me as 4 years remaining to get full amount too.
That seems like a weird coincidence that all three of us have four years left to a full state pension. So were either of you in a contracted out pension scheme at all? (you will know this as on the page that tells you have four years left to get a maximum pension if you scroll down there is a section that tells you that you have also contracted out at some point)
Yeah, mine says that at the bottom too, although I’ve been in the same scheme since I started full time employment in 88.
I’ve been with the same employer & scheme since 86.
I think we need someone to explain in very simple terms what is meant by “contracted out”, but it seems to be saying that our company pension will cover the difference.
Not that it really matters as I can’t see myself retiring for about 9yrs…unless I take partial retirement before then.
I think back in the day there was the basic pension and then there was the State Earnings Related Pension (SERPS). If you were in an occupational pension, there used to be an option where you “contracted out” of SERPS and I think the additional NI that you would have been paying went into your occupational pension scheme instead.
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I’d be too scared to look. Reckon I’d be 30 yrs short. 
As @Whisk just said.
In the past if you were contracted out, you and your employees paid lower NI contributions and/ or some of your NI contributions went in another pension scheme such as a personal of stakeholder pension. It is likely that it is the latter (which it was in my case). You couldn’t opt out ( ie: ‘contract out’) out of the state pension rather you were contracted out of the additional state pension part but in addition you could also pay less NI contributions into the State Pension. So in effect the reduced amount of NI contributions were instead paid into your own private pension (in my case my University pension).
You can get a figure for this which is known as the ‘Contracted out Pension Equivalent’ (COPE); again from the same page as the rest of your information about your state pension.
I know that this practice was stopped in April 2016 and you now just have the State Pension. How long you have opted/contracted out will depend on when your pension provider started to offer this option/when you joined your pension/when you selected this option (assuming you had the choice).
For me I don’t know how long this is. I can vaguely remember the University offering this option. However that said I’m pretty sure now that is the reason why I still need to pay four years to get a full state pension
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Wasn’t contracting out of SERPS another miss-selling scandal? I vaguely recall people losing out after being encouraged to contract out and put the money into defined contribution schemes that under-performed 
What is the weekly state pension amount because when I google it it says £175 pw but my forecast is more than that?
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Yes, except the term ‘miss sold’ is so loose that all you have to say is ‘they never told me that’
I’m sure how that is possible; however I have just Googled it too and found the following statement
‘The full new State Pension is £175.20 per week. The actual amount you get depends on your National Insurance record. The only reasons the amount can be higher are if: you have over a certain amount of Additional State Pension.’
I guess that’s you then?
I didn’t ‘opt out’ back in the day so hopefully it is from that.
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Just have to get shot of Covid and the Over 50s NI thread is the most popular on the forum 
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hmm, not as bad as I thought. I have 21yrs missing and right now can get £137p/w.
I can pay 4 x £795.60 to make some of it up and if I work until 2032, will get £175 p/w
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Before I went to Uni I was in a bit of a dead end job but took out a pension with Barclays at the time, I’ll be lucky if it pays me £20 PA! But I’m fairly sure that was contracted out with SERPS.
If you don’t have the full 35 years of NI, the £175 goes down in increments.
It’s actually 24 years today that I started working at the uni, I was only on a 2 year contract 
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