Can someone explain why I don't get a full State Pension please?

You can Maggie but only if their parent or main care giver doesn’t need it to use it themselves, you can’t both use it.

I’d guess that some of the posters who stopped working before their state pension date would have looked after grandchildren for a few hours a week during that time. If so, there’s no need to buy in Class 3 credits for the extra years, you can get them credited under the scheme I mentioned earlier in the thread.

www.gov.uk/guidance/apply-for-specified-adult-childcare-credits

Jeannie99 do you have a Government Gateway account? They are fairly easy to set up online and it will show exactly how your pension is made up with all the individual years listed.
Start by going to HMRC’s login page and then click the green sign in button to create an account.
It’s useful because it shows any year you might be short and by how much, for one year I only had to pay an extra £64 to qualify for that whole year.

I’m in a very similar situation. Retired on a works pension in 2020. 5 years short of my state pension age. I like you expected to get full state pension. Thought as I had worked full time for 46 years etc. But when I checked my national insurance contributions I found I was deemed to be 3 years short. After checking information on Martin Lewis’s website I choose to make up the missing years. It has cost me about £815 per year . My final year will cost more and can’t be paid yet.
Government Gateway is quite easy to use. Get yourselves signed up and find out what other clever tricks this government has up its sleeve for us girls born in the late 50s. Good Luck ladies !

If I recall correctly your State Retirement Pension is made up of a number of elements and only the basic state pension is based on the years you have paid into the system. Remember many people have worked for many years but only years where you have paid sufficient national insurance in any given year count towards your state pension.

Oh dear. Perhaps she doesn't understand or is fibbing.

I think you should contact your MP.
With elections this year, they will be eager to help

Callistemon21
The lady is not a widow her husband receives a pension.
Asking for a statement is exactly what I have done many times, every time I ring they are always going to look into it but never do.
I have no idea who I can contact for help, clearly pensions don't want to deal with it.

jeanie99 I cannot see how that can be correct unless the woman you spoke to is a widow.

Write in or contact DWP for a written statement of how your pension is worked out.

The Married Women's Stamp was a way of cheating women out of their pensions, thank goodness it has been abolished.

SporeRB

I am confused. I retired 18 months ago at age 60. I already have 35 years NI contributions with no missing years and have reduced state pension due to contracting out.

From 60-67 if I were to pay the NI contributions for these missing years, does that mean I can increase my state pension?

I stress I am not an expert but my reading of Section 4 of the text from the link I posted suggests that you can. It says:

Under the new system, someone's total state pension will comprise of two elements:

a) A 2016 ‘starting amount’, based on the NI record of the worker up to that point

PLUS

b) An additional 1/35 of the full flat rate for each complete qualifying year from 2016/17 onwards, until the worker attains the full flat rate

This new way of working out the state pension has three important consequences with regard to the impact of past contracting out:

a) For those who have a starting amount below the full flat rate as at 2016, making contributions from 2016/17 onwards provides the opportunity to ‘burn off’ some or all of the effect of past contracting out;

for example, if someone is £20 per week short of the full flat rate in 2016/17 because of past contracting out, working four more years will add enough to their starting amount to bring them up to the full flat rate. In this respect, the new state pension is highly favourable to those who have been contracted out, provided that they have enough working years post April 2016 to benefit. This group can get the same flat rate pension as people who were not contracted out, but also get a contracted out pension on top.

My understanding is that you don't have to physically work those extra years. You could pay Voluntary Class 3 allocated to the years between when you retired and your pensionable age.

As I said, voluntary Class 3 NIC is currently £907.40 per year (£17.45 pw). The rate has been frozen for 2024/25. That £907.40 would give you an extra £5.82 a week or £302.64 a year extra pension. In three years you have your money back.

Write to this address to enquire:

The Pension Service
Post Handling Site A
Wolverhampton
WV98 1AF

Your pension forecast may already show what you can do but if you can pay Voluntary Class 3 it has to be sent to HMRC. You need a individual reference number to do so it's a good idea to get confirmation in writing.

The best of luck with trying to receive any sort of conclusive answer from state pensions.
I started work in 1959 until 2006, worked part time paying a married women's stamp when I had my children only taking at the most 2 yrs off.
I increased to a full stamp in the later years. I receive a very low state pension which I have tried to get them check to see if there as been an error made in calculating.
Absolutely impossible to get an answer, I have spoken to so many people over the years and sent emails and letters without any answer.
I had always believed my pension was low because of the information from other ladies who had retired and where receiving larger pensions.
It came to a head this last year when an acquaintance from a local club I belong to asked me how to work out the state pension.
I told her it was based on the number of years she had paid NI. She explained she had never worked from getting married at 18 and had no children.
She told me some weeks later and was so thrilled that she was on a full pension because she had been able to claim against her husbands stamps.
When I sent yet another letter to Pensions asking how a women with no children who had never worked not paying NI or income tax could possibly receive a higher pension than me they just ignored the letter.

Remind your daughters who earn too much to claim and receive child benefit that they still need to apply to keep their NI payments up. No claim = missing years of NI = lower pension.

I retired from teaching at 55 and paid class three NI contributions for twelve years as the Teachers’Pension Scheme was contracted out. I still don’t get the full pension but it’s better than I would have received had I not paid. I get to a break even point at the age of seventy two - if I make it - and after that I will receive more in pension than I paid in class three contributions.

* au fait NOT faithful!

ALICE and anyone else… I wasn’t and still am not au faithful with variants of the Pension system…but what I do know is that after plucking up courage speaking to a gov’t pensions dept. was the best thing I did …they were very helpful and tho I don’t qualify for a full Pension I was given Pension Credit which increases my Pension to NEARLY the full state amount.
I have worked all my life ( 78 this year) but due to working as a civil Servant and taking the married woman’s lump sum ( £1000) when I left to marry in the 1970s, then 3 years later becoming self- employed…this decimated my record!
But to all those who are receiving under the full amount you should …get in touch with the relevant dept…they were very helpful!

I am confused. I retired 18 months ago at age 60. I already have 35 years NI contributions with no missing years and have reduced state pension due to contracting out.

From 60-67 if I were to pay the NI contributions for these missing years, does that mean I can increase my state pension?

I paid in enough contributions to get 80per cent of the full state pension. Didn’t claim for any of my husbands pension contributions.

If DWP confirm that someone is is eligible to top up by paying voluntary Class 3 then it’s worth doing - sooner rather than later as any enhanced pension paid as a result is not backdated.

It currently costs £907 per year for voluntary Class 3 NIC. That gives an extra £5.82 a week or £302 a year extra pension. In three years you have your money back.

I retired at 54 but even if I'd continued working to 66 I would not have enough contributions as I worked in the public service and therefore contracted out. I bought missing years ie NI contributions. Now i get a full state pension .I'm not sure if it is still on the money saving expert website but there was some information there.

Even though you maybe state pension age, you may find that you can buy the missing years . You have to bear in mind that it can take 7 to 10 years to get a benefit but I'm not planning to die just yet!

Why don’t we get the same as everyone else I wonder.

Because those of us born in the 1950s didn’t get our state pension aged 60; we got it aged 66. If you work out how much pension you received between the age of 60 and 66, that’s what we lost - and older women ‘gained’. There’s no fairness in the state pension as far as I can see!

Fairycakes

I'm concerned reading OP's dilemma as I gave up work in the early 80s to become a full time mum. My husband has been paying NI all along so I hope that covers me also. If not, I'm in trouble 😱

If you were a full time mum claiming child benefit you would be entitled to Home Responsibilities Payments. I was a stay at home mum and was credited for about 14 years of contributions as they are for children up to the age of 12 and I had 2 children just under 2 years apart. Get a forecast and check you are being credited for the relevant number of years as a carer for your children.
I have lost a bit due to being contracted out for the years I was working, but I have the private pensions I was contributing to which caused me to be contracted out, so I'm on more than just the basic state pension. I'm slightly better off now than when I was working, though I was entitled to benefits before I drew my first pension so I'm not exactly well off. Can't complain, as there are many far worse off than I am!

My DH is on the run-up to getting his SP but it won’t be the full amount.
Firstly because he worked for local government so some of his state pension is actually already being paid within his occupational pension.
Secondly because he retired early and so has had some deducted for years not paid even though he had already paid 40 years.
There are articles that throw doubt on whether someone in his ‘double wammy’ position would actually benefit from buying the extra years. It is so complicated!

I retired at age 60, but because I was born in 1945, I don’t receive the same amount of pension that others get if they were born after 1950 something.
Which I think is unfair. The amount differing is quite substantial.
I also had enough NI contributions.
Why don’t we get the same as everyone else I wonder.

AskAlice I retired at 58 born 1955. I don't get full state pension because of my pension receuved from my work. They include that when calculating your State Pension. They've git you all ways including tax,again! Thats on top of the fact you should have got it at 60! In total because I'm a WASPI woman I have lost 43k which I have paid into....disgusting!

There is a lot of misunderstanding and some misleading comments about how someone’s state pension entitlement is calculated.

Although the number of qualifying of years is important, it isn’t as simple as saying I have paid x number of years. It will be, in years to come, for people who have only paid NIC since 6 April 2016 but for now, there are millions of people whose NIC records span that date and were contracted out of SERPS.

Their pension entitlement will reflect that unless they can work for enough years beyond 2016 to “burn off” any years where their pension entitlement is reduced.

For some people, the problematic years will be 1997-2002. During that period, contracted out workers accrued no SERPS and there was no contracted out deduction. But those workers did benefit from reduced NI contributions and this needs to be reflected in the final calculation.

This is all explained in Section 4 of the link I posted earlier. Here it is again:

www.lcp.com/media/1150050/why-is-money-being-deducted-from-my-state-pension.pdf

I agree with you Treelover that the amount of state pension one receives should be based on the monetary amount of one’s NI contributions over the working years, as opposed to just the number of contributing years. I have several friends who worked part time for their entire working lives; they paid NI for the qualifying number of years and receive the full state pension. I worked full time for the required number of years, so paid much higher NI contributions than them yet, because of being contracted out, I don’t even get the full state pension.