If you are nearing state pension age and not sure what you’ll be entitled to, you can check and pay to fill any gaps you might have.
To qualify for the current full state pension of £221.20 per week you need to have 35 “qualifying years”. You have a qualifying year if you earned above a certain amount during the tax year. These amounts are relatively low, however, if you’ve been out of work for any length of time, or had low earnings due to part time work, or even been self-employed with little or no profits, then you may have gaps.
Incidentally, rental income from residential property does not count, so if your income has only, or partly been rental income, then you might not have enough years to qualify for full state pension.
You can check you state pension online by creating a HMRC Government Gateway account:
https://www.gov.uk/log-in-register-hmrc-online-services/register
Alternatively, you can call the Department for Work & Pensions on 0800 721 0175, but they are very busy.
The urgent thing is a deadline of 5th April 2025. Until this time you can fill gaps as far back as 2006.
What it will cost you is dependant on each circumstance, but usually class 3 NIC at a rate of £824.20 per year. Of course, it becomes a matter of “is it worth it?”. To answer that question, we have to be quite morbid and decide how long we are likely to live for!
I recently did a calculation for a client who is 65 who faced paying and additional £5,000, but the increase it made to his state pension meant he only had to live until he was 69 to recover his investment, so he will fill the gaps.