Martin Lewis’ pension show – featuring Steve Webb as Robin to Lewis’ uncaped crusader, was a hit with its studio audience, in our household and I suspect for about 7m viewers for whom “pensions” are paid by the state.
Ok there are 10.9m of us who get pensions from work – but Martin wasn’t talking to them and he certainly wasn’t talking about the workplace savings schemes that pay pots rather pensions. This was about income for life and not about wealth.
Trott’s state pension lifeline
And what he had to say was really really interesting. Laura Trott had announced , presumably with the show in mind, that the concession made earlier in the year to allow people to rebuild their state pension credits from 2006 , would be continued to April 2025, relieving pressure on the DWP’s pension helpline and meaning that millions of partially pensioned “oldies” could work out how much to send the DWP to max their state pension entitlements.
You now have until 5 April 2025 to pay voluntary national insurance (NI) contributions on gaps in your NI record between 2006 and 2016.
This is the second deadline extension – it was previously changed from 5 April to 31 July 2023 – and follows reports that Government helplines have been completely overwhelmed in recent months, preventing callers from being able to get the necessary advice.
In addition to extending the deadline, the cost of paying voluntary NI contributions will remain frozen until 5 April 2025.
So if you’re years away from state pension age, you’ve more time to decide if paying to plug gaps in your NI record is right for you – just don’t put it off too long. If you’re almost (or already) at state pension age, and doing this is right for you, you shouldn’t put it off at all to ensure you get the maximum benefit from paying to plug gaps in your record.
People with less than full state pension entitlements can top them up at the cost of £840 per year and sometimes for free (depending on what they’ve been up to).
Pensioners- especially women – who have lost their life partners late in life, may well be missing out on their spouse’s pension.
And everyone can benefit from listening to Martin and his team’s clear summary of what the state can do for you in retirement and what you can do for yourself to make sure you get maximum value from it.
Pension credit week
Martin also spent time explaining pension credit and time explaining how sometimes it is better not to max your state pension – if it means missing out on pension credit – and its door to more.
Martin is leading the charge to get some of the 800,000 savers who are missing out not just on pension credit itself – but all the benefits it brings.
(We are involved in promoting pension credit too!)
Here’s Laura Trott explaining at the start of the week
“Today marks the beginning of the #PensionCredit Week of Action – a whole week of activity designed to raise awareness and show pensioners how easy it is to find out if they could get extra financial help worth an average of £3,500 per year”
Laura Trott, Minister for Pensions pic.twitter.com/9VcpF5kgCd
— Department for Work and Pensions (@DWPgovuk) June 12, 2023
Missed it?
The episode will be available on ITVX if you missed it. You should be able to catch up on it tonight or whenever.
Watch from here
