State Pension

Are you sure that is per month and not per 4 weeks?

I have 45 years of contributions and my pension is £637.92 a month which isn’t the £718 it should be... I have tried to get through to the pensions office impossible at the moment... I really don’t understand it and do actually need to speak to somebody because reading about it just leaves me in more of a muddle?‍♀️

Also Pension credits come into play and top up the shortfall to a liveble amount

I understood the only part you could ‘opt out ‘ of was SERPS - If you had a Govt pension such as teaching - you were opted out automatically.

The full basic amount is £179.60 a week.

It is indeed complicated, grannyrebel. Another differential is that some years where you were deemed to be “opted out” will not now count towards your state pension.

There are ways of enhancing your payment. If you have been looking after grandchildren in recent years you could claim Specified Adult Childcare Credits, which could help build up an entitlement to a larger pension, or you might consider buying up recent years where there are gaps in your contributions.. Each eligible full year costs about £750 and adds around £5 per week to your pension. You should never buy in years though without first checking with the Pension Service - sometimes it’s just not worth doing this, as it only applies to certain years.

From my recent experience, the best way to contact the Pension Service is by phone. You may have to hang on for ages to get through, but they’ve always very helpful. Any emails, messages or letters I’ve sent just sank without trace, perhaps because they’ve all been working from home.

this was discussed on MoneyBox, radio 4, last weekend.
sounds very complicated. even the two experts could not agree on the effect of the main changes, one said it would benefit the lowly paid, the other said they would be worse off.
and they were looking at the same facts.
upshot is, very few people will get exactly the same state pension, but eventually years ahead, most people will.

As Jaxjacky says it is really complicated. always was, even more so now the new flat rate system has been introduced, for some. Very few people, even now, get the standard amount.

My pension is made up of a proportion of the standard rate, because I do not have a full contribution record to which is added amounts because I made Graduated Pension payments ( a scheme of extra income based units dating back to 1960s-70s), SERPS (State Earnings Related Pension Scheme) because my salary exceeded a certain sum, so that I paid higher contributions and get extra on my state pension.. Some of the SERPS I get 100% of because I was not in any private pension scheme at the time I paid them. If I was in a private pension scheme, providing for the SERPS was devolved to my employer who got some contribution from the government towards them.

If you can make sense of the above, you will understand why everyone has a different pension payment from the government. Then of course in 2016 (or thereabouts) they changed the whole system to a flat rate system, but this has to be phased in over a period of years, so if you are still working, that will also be an element in your pension

As Jaxjacky says. look at a reputable site online like MoneySavingExpert to explain in detail.

MoneySavingExpert website explains it. Depends on full years paid, pre and post 2016, whether you were contracted out or not, you can buy extra years. As I said, this Martin Lewis site MSE explains it better than I can.