He urged people to check carefully as not everyone would benefit from doing this
Martin Lewis has encouraged people to check whether they could benefit from making voluntary National Insurance contributions towards their state pension. Voluntary contributions can be made if there are gaps in your NI record, potentially boosting your state pension entitlement. A listener of his BBC podcast shared with Mr Lewis that he had managed to significantly boost his pension following the finance expert’s advice to check if he could purchase additional contributions.
The person previously had only nine years of NI contributions. You need at least 10 years’ worth to qualify for any state pension when claiming the benefit. To receive the full new state pension, which currently stands at £230.25 per week, you typically need 35 years of contributions. Payments are set to rise by 4.8 percent next April in line with the triple lock, increasing the full new rate to £241.30 a week, or £12,547.60 annually.
The listener was able to purchase 18 years’ worth of contributions under a previous extended scheme that concluded in April 2025. Normally, you can only buy contributions dating back up to six years, but this period was temporarily extended, allowing voluntary contributions as far back as the 2006/2007 tax year.
Mr Lewis worked out how much the person would have boosted their retirement income thanks to the top up. He said: “You bought 18 years, it probably cost you depending on if you were self employed or not, somewhere in the region of £10,000 to £15,000, so quite a lot of money.
“But on the back of that, you would get I would estimate around £120 a week state pension, which is about £6,000 a year. Let’s say you live 20 years from your pension age, which would be a typical life expectancy – that’s £120,000 and that is inflation proofed because of the triple lock.”
With 18 years of National Insurance contributions, you could expect to receive approximately £124 a week in state pension, nearly £6,500 annually. Mr Lewis issued some further words of advice for anyone considering topping up.
‘Very lucrative’
He explained: “The whole issue about April 2025 is that was the deadline for going back to 2006. The rules now are that you can only go back six years.
“It was about the transition from the old state pension to the new state pension. If you are missing years in the last six years, it is worth checking and doing the maths.
“There are some guides online that will help you deciding whether it is worth you buying those extra years to make sure that you’re getting the full state pension. If you are missing years, it can be very lucrative but it isn’t right for everyone and it’s a bit of a process.”
