Martin Lewis is urging people born after these dates that this is their last chance to get £6,100 a year added to their state pensions before a deadline passes.
If you miss the deadline this tax year to add up to 13 years of National Insurance records back to your state pension calculations, you will never be able to buy them in future, which could knock £6,100 a year off your state pension pot.
But if you act now you can buy any missing years in your National Insurance record which could give you as much as £6,100 per year when you retire, a tidy profit.
Martin explained on Tuesday night’s The Martin Lewis Money Show Live on ITV1: “Each full old National Insurance year costs around £800 and it adds £330 a year to your pension. And it’s currently inflation-proof because of the triple lock.
“After around two and a half years, you break even.
“If you’re a man who lives to typical life expectancy, which is 85, you pay the full £800 you’re gonna get back £5,400. A woman who lives to 87 is gonna get back £6,100.
“That’s for each year you buy if you’re missing gaps. It is phenomenally lucrative.”
Martin then added ‘do not simply apply, this is complex, you have to do it properly.”
There is now an online tool that some people can use.
Then you can pay online unless your case is complex, at which point you can phone the Future Pension Centre to buy them through that.
Martin said: “There is a deadline coming. This is about the fact that each £800 you pay you could gain £5,400 or more. It’s all about the new state pension that came in in 2016.
“That is for men born after April 5 1951 and women born after April 5 1953.
“To get the full state pension you need to have 35-ish qualifying national insurance years.
“And it is a big ish, it’s not 35 years, it varies on lots of factors so just see that as an ish.
“You gain National Insurance years usually by working, currently you have to earn over £125 a week to get them.
“But millions of people are missing National Insurance years. You might have spent years abroad, you might have had a low income, a career break…
“So my clarion call today is about check now if you can buy missing years.”
“It ends this tax year, April 5 2025, until then you can buy back missing years to 2006, after the transitional arrangements end you can only buy back six years, so there are 13 missing years that are going to close this year.”