state pension NI contributions, and no job, problem

I was fortunate. Born in 1949 I was able to retire at 60.
I was also fortunate to get credited for NI until ds was 16. I was working part time but not earning enough to pay NI.
I wrongly thought I got credits whilst receiving child benefit which was until he was 18, he was still at school doing A levels. No NI credits after ds was 16.

About 12 years ago I asked for a pension forecast....Took about six months for it to be received. It stated that I was short some years and could buy to catch up.
By this time I was divorced and couldn't afford to pay to catch up.
The weekly pension benefit wasn't going to be worth the payment.
When I later got my government pension in 2009, I got full pension.
Don't know whatever happened about the missing years.

Hello, I've only just joined Gransnet so this might seem an odd and controversial thread to comment on. However I do feel a lot of sympathy for LoopyLou. She is right that a lot of promises were suddenly and arbitrarily broken. I'm one of those too, born in late 1953 and promised various things by the DWP which now turn out to have been lies.
I also notice that LoopyLou said 'when my husband dies' and I wonder if he is ill? Widows are another set of women who used to be looked after who are now reviled. It's really not ok to tell someone who grew up and lived with an entirely different set of state driven beliefs/understandings that they have been, in effect, stupid.

Young people are quick to criticize now and I certainly know one young woman who has only ever worked briefly as a cleaner who is now living with her baby in a council flat. Boyfriend intermittent, who is thinking of having another baby so she can get a council house. Working doesn't seem to be on her radar and she knows how to evade the job centre people. If you haven't experienced it. You can't imagine the sheer heartlessness of current job centre rules for those you DON'T know how to cheat the system. LoopyLou sounded upset and desperate to me and needed a bit of a hug. Don't let this government divide and rule. We HAVE worked for our pensions!

And bother, because I'm up extra early and using my silly smartphone, I've said LoopyLou not Lyndylou and I see the spellchecker has inserted a couple of weird words. I am literate, honestly! Better go and make a cup of tea! :-)

For the record, when I was made redundant, I was told both by the union and my employer that it was right and proper that I should go to the job centre and sign on. Apparently, it is no longer acceptable for a woman to stay at home and not sign on, she should it seems go and get her NI credits/ benefits and that this was required now under the new rules. This was especially true for me because I do not have any children toget an automatic credit for (you get 7 years NI apparently retrospectively if you have raised a child to adulthood).

This is to avoid the scenario many are experiencing here, of missing contributions due to being at home and not signing (which is what happened in the past).

Of course there are still two systems in operation depending on your age.

I took two years out of full time emplyment when the children were born and didn't get any NI credits as I returned to full time work before 1978. I don't know where some people got this idea that they would get married, have kids and stay at home being kept by their husbands. It certainly wasn't the philosophy in my family where girls were encouraged to build themselves careers. I worked for 36 years and built up a private pension.

But what's done is done lyndylou and if you were raised in those expectations then I am sorry you find yourself in this predicament. In truth there's plenty of work out there still if you're prepared to take it. Most of it doesn't pay well and is hard work and unsociable hours. Respect to Hilda for not being too proud to take whatever work was available. Care homes are always looking for staff too.

Hi lindylou1. Sadly this forum has at least the same proportion of people who feel they have a right to put forward their opinion on the morality of any situation as the country as a whole. However, you came on here for practical advice and I will try to confine my answer to that.

I am not sure if it is allowed to put the address of another forum on here but, as this one only deals with the practical side of consumer problems, including work and social ones, I hope this address is OK.

www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/index.php

You will need to sign up and you will need to go to the Work and Social forum. This is an example you may find interesting:

www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?434640-Advisor-threatening-to-close-down-JSA-claim-if-I-do-not-comply-with-unreasonable-request&highlight=NI+Credits

As you will see a combination of people who use the services and people who work or have worked in them and know the laws and rules will reply.

I do hope this helps.

Coolgran65 I was born in 1949 too and how lucky we were to be able to retire when we had always be led to expect we would retire

I wonder if your pension was made up by contributions from your husbands NI for the period while you were married. If you sent proof of your divorce in (Decree Absolute) they will have done this as far as I am aware.

I have nothing to add Lyndylou other than you have my sympathy. The goal posts have indeed been moved. In the late 70s and early 80s it was common to be a sahm, at least for a few years. Unfortunately, after a few years out of paid employment it was not easy for many to restart a meaningful career. Many mothers, myself included, took part time work to fit round the children. In my case I had 3 young children, one with a disability, and no family to help with child care. I wishI had thought more about the implications on my pension but I dont see what I could have done differently anyway. I hope you sort this out Lyndylou.

Yes, sorry, I made a mistake. My sister was born in 53, so she retires just before she is 63, not 65.
Anyway, the other points are true. She has had to sign on, having come off DLA, because of both hips having been done, although she is still disabled as far as the Post Office is concerned, and cannot do her previous job. So for two years she is deemed able to get a job. She has signed up to a course in computing with the possibilty, so the DWP think, of her being able to get a job after she has done the course.
They play the system with women our age, so she is playing along with it.
Have you noticed how the employment figures for women are used? They never say that they have fixed the figures by making women work longer. It's always " more women are in work under this government than ever before".

Is there any point in going on about all the changes? Everything seems to change over the years and some win and some lose.

I didn't get credit for childcare, everyone gets it now.

I had to have 39 years contribution (didn't make it) then it went down to 30 now up to 35.

I could have been sacked when I was 60 because at that time employers could.

Those who have to work longer to get their state pensions do at least have more years to make them up.

Swings and roundabouts come to mind.

I'm not sure about the 'things always change' line. Life was probably quite settled in the UK until the 1990s and since then, change has escalated, there have been a number of economic crises of various sorts and economic inequality is widening. Quite honestly, I think the government is in a panic and I can't stop thinking how incredibly unfair it is for some, often not through their own actions. I have seen a set of people in their 60s being sat down and harried in a 'Job Club' intended to 'get them back into employment'. It looked horrible, patronising, exhausting. Illness is not taken into account, not even cancer. The sick looking after the elderly (one of those many jobs apparently available out there) conjuries up visions of the 19th century workhouse, is that ok?

This report makes interesting reading:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/411420/a-new-vision-for-older-workers.pdf

I find it depressing government-speak just like the statements regarding women in work pointed out by durhamjen above.

Not very practical I'm afraid lyndyloo but I get upset at how complacent the UK has become about those who are struggling. I don't know how fit you are or what kind of exercise you have ever done, but it is possible to train at any age through the Keep Fit Association www.keepfit.org.uk and similar bodies to teach keep fit or dance as a self employed person. I think organisations like Age UK and perhaps MIND also offer training of this sort which starts of as voluntary work and then can be paid. I know someone who has always been a keen gardener who is now self employed and has built up a little business for herself doing weeding, mowing, hedge cutting for other older people. You can earn about £15 an hour for this depending on where you live. If you want to be self employed, you have to ask yourself what in your life you have enjoyed doing and could you teach it to others?
And that makes me think about the local branch of MIND where I live who organise courses in assertiveness and self esteem which you may not think you need but I am sure you have lots of skills, you just don't recognise them and the courses I have seen advertised help you to think about yourself in a positive light.
Good luck to you and I hope you get some time to relax and enjoy life before the slave drivers who run our society now destroy all enjoyment and free thought in favour of working until we drop!

Lyndylou, thought I would just say that the report I linked to above has an appendix with lots of links to organisations which could be very useful to you.

For instance, this is a very inspiring story and useful website

https://www.tradingtimes.org.uk/community/31133646/

My last word on the subject!

All good points Rosannabanna it is an awful situation whereby sick people are harangued to get back to work, there are ever more worse reports on Radio 4 every week of people being deemed fit to return to work/seek work when undergoing chemotherapy.

Anya When somebody is clearly feeling anxious and is asking for advice, is it really appropriate to start regaling them with your own achievements and, by implication, criticise them for their own courses of action?

Perhaps you can count yourself as fortunate that you were born into a family where girls were expected to have a discernible career path. For many young women in the 50's and 60's and probably even into the 70's that wasn't the case. The expectation for girls was often that they take on a fairly mundane sort of job, and that subsequent to having children any job they took would have to "fit around" their families. Many things in society reinforced this perception of women being secondary to men (e.g. it was difficult for a woman to get a loan or a mortgage). It's hardly surprising that even women who did not have children, did not see themselves as "career material".

We seem to have lost lyndylou1; I do hope she is OK.

Rosannabanna - that was such a thoughtful post.

Really Eloethsn?

That's not what I found, nor my friends. I was born into a mining family, but that didn't stop us having aspirations. I find your remarks odd in the extreme and your ideas of the 'expectations' of girls antediluvian.

Just as well there were enough people like myself, born in the 40s, who did go out to work therefore. We were the ones who fought for the rights of woman in the workplace.

Anya I was also brought up to believe that women should be pregnant and in the kitchen! My brothers could have further education but not my sister and I. I'm afraid it was still around in the 50s and 60s and may have continued until we stopped being a possession of our husbands for income tax. It was only when I left home I discovered I wasn't inferior.

but the OP is only just 60 so would not have been growing up in the 50s and 70s.
by the 70s I am sure that women were attending university and moving away from traditional roles - as many of us were
we have tried to be helpful to the OP - just pointing out that working for a few years part-time has never equated to full state pension. and pension credit is means tested so perhaps their household income is too high for that.

OP is only a year older than me, I shall have to work until 66. The majority of my friends had careers which they carried on when children came along, and the married women's stamp disappeared years and years ago! Something doesnt add up......I am sorry that OP has found herself in this position, but it truly would be unfair on those of us who work full time if she was able to claim a pension on the basis of working part time for a long time. I also had no sympathy for those women who moaned about their small pensions after paying the married women's stamp. I really dont see why OP is complaining, she has a small pension in her own right when she reaches the appropriate age, they are comfortably off, and now she is moaning because it has been suggested that she gets a job to enable her to build up sufficient contributions to obtain a full pension.....so??????

Having re-read OP I'm confused....if someone is 60, retires in 6 years and needs 5 years NI contributions then surely any job, albeit probably lower paid, would solve the problem?
I don't want to appear unsympathetic but needs must would apply?

I don't think she was complaining GillT57. She was asking for information. I do thank heavens that no one is judging the morality of the decisions I have made with the information I had available that subsequently changed out of all recognition. I think if we are in a reasonable position now we are very lucky people . Didn't the Bible say something about "judge not lest ye be judged". There was a lot of wisdom around in those days, I feel.

Or, as I suggested, she finds out how much extra she'd actually get by working those 5 years to see whether it would be worth it in the long-run.

I don't understand why the OP is complaining, either. She and her DH will still be comfortably off with or without the extra!

My father and grandfather believed that an education was wasted on a girl because she got married and had a family.

Had I passed the 11+ and gone to grammar school things might have been different.
For the record.I was born in 1955.
I started school in 1960.
Went to secondary school in 1966 and left in 1970.

Thats growing up in the 1960's and early 70's.

I gota job in a in a factory, couldnt stand the noise and cold and then I went to work in a small shop. I didnt have qualifications to work in an office.

I met my husband and got married.

I wanted a family. I had three pregnancies -that was the 10 years when I was not working. After my first baby died I stayed home and hoped to start a family .

I also looked after my father and my mother and my grandfather in that time. All unpaid and without any of the modern carers allowances etc. But that was the way.

In 1992 i got a part time job and kept that until this year. A career never really entered my head . I was never clever enough. I know somany go to university these days and then have "careers in retail". I just had a job ( did the same things as they now call a career) But in the 1960's /70's you had to be clever to go to university. Otherwise you got a job and you hoped to marry and get a home of your own where I grew up. That was my real ambition too. I wanted to be a wife and mother.

I can see so many of you do not understand that but that was what I wanted. Now of course if you do not want a career you stay single and go on benefits for a lifetime.

I am glad some of you had things go welland you were clever and got those careers.

I have been making further enquiries about my situation. Thanks to those who provided links.

Ana,I am mostly worried about what happens when my husband dies if I have no pension. I am comfortably off now. I may not be when his pension is taken away on his death. Of course I may go before him .... and then I may not.

He and I hadworked out I would be able to survive with a single persons pension and the widows gratuity he would leave me. But no full pension changes that.

If I thought I could manage on a less than full pension from the state, I would say B*gger 'um and not bother. But then we pay taxas my husband has more than a state pension - so we actually pay for those benefits others get dont we?

It seems to me some posters here lack joined up thinking. First I am supposed not to claimand get NI credits but yet I am supposed to pay for other claimants and their NI in our taxes ( and the taxes I paid when I was working too).

Does your DH's works pension die with him, Lyndylou, with no provision for you, as his widow? If he did go first, you may be able to claim a proportion of his state pension, depending on how it's made up - the CAB will be able to advise you on this.

GillT57, I do not know ifyou realise but it is not the number of hours you work that gets the NI for your pension but the factyou pay NI at all.

I have paid all my NI for the 30 years I have accrued in NI contributions ( not credits).

If I had made a career of being unemployed and signing on I would have been given NI credits and when I reached retirement I would still have got a full pension. Is that fair?