Note: This blog is specifically related to the New State Pension which is for men born on or after 6 April 1951 and women born on or after 6 April 1953. Anyone born before this, would be entitled instead to the Basic State Pension.

How to qualify for the State Pension
When you pay national insurance either through employment, your personal tax return, or receive national insurance credits you are contributing towards your State Pension entitlement.

In order to get the State Pension, you must have at least 10 qualifying years of National Insurance payments. These do not need to be consecutive years.

If you have 10 qualifying years, you will get 10/35 of the full state pension, which for the 2020/21 financial year works out to be just £50 per week, or £2,612 per year.

How to get the maximum State Pension
For the full State Pension, you will need 35 qualifying years of National Insurance payments. The maximum state pension as of the 2020/21 financial year is £175.20 per week, which works out at £9,141.69 per year. You can increase this if you delay taking your state pension upon reaching pensionable age.

If you have between 10 and 35 qualifying years, you will receive an amount between the minimum and maximum pension accordingly.

Check how much you have contributed
There is a government website that allows you to check how many qualifying years you have on your National Insurance record. That can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/check-state-pension. You will need a Government Gateway account but if you do not already have one, you can create one easily.

This website will tell you how much per week you are entitled to based on your contributions to date and how many further years you will need to contribute for to get the maximum State Pension.

Pension age
Your State Pension age will be between 65 and 68 depending on when you were born. You can check your personal retirment age here: https://www.gov.uk/state-pension-age/y/age

When you reach this age you will receive a letter telling you what to do. If you wish to defer your pension, you will not need to do anything. If you wish to start claiming you will need to follow the instructions on the letter or claim online here: https://www.gov.uk/new-state-pension/how-to-claim

Voluntary Payments
You can also pay National Insurance voluntarily to ensure you have contributed enough. There are two ways to do this:

• If you are self-employed but earn less than the threshold to pay national insurance (currently £6,475 for the 2020-21 finanncial year) you can opt to pay national insurance voluntarily on your self-assessment tax return
• You can pay Class 3 National Insurance which can fill in any gaps in your National Insurance record. This will not always increase your state pension. The Future Pension Centre, a government department, can help you find out if it would help you. For further information, use this website: https://www.gov.uk/future-pension-centre

Other pensions
You may have other pensions, either through employment or personal contributions. These contributions should be tax free on you as an individual and any income you receive in retirement will be on top of the State Pension.

Each pension will have it’s own terms and conditions about what age you have to reach in order to claim the pension. Many allow you to claim much earlier than the State Pension.

Further advice
Pensions advice is regulated, meaning that as an accountant I cannot offer you advice on this, or give you much more information over the above. However, I do work in partnership with a pensions advisor who I can put you in touch with if you want professional advice around your financial planning.