And one last thing to check if/when you do pay - I did mine whilst living in Canada for 15 years. The rules changed in 2016 which in our case meant it wasn’t worth paying the additional contributions prior to then and we had enough years still ahead of us to get the maximum pension payment. However one of the payments I made was mistakenly credited to a wrong year - they confirmed it was their fault, not mine - easy to miss as it takes a while for the payments to get through the system.

Looked into it for my Mrs who has about 20 something years of contributions. Definitely in the "too hard" basket. Hours on hold, web sites that don't work. I read that people who do top up don't see the balance in their account for several years. I'm glad I didn't do it as it looks like they are going to means test the UK pension. They will probably start by denying it to people living overseas.

Sounds like you had a particularly bad experience- in our case, which admittedly was about 5 years ago, we had a couple of good talks with informative HMRC staff - it did take a little while ( a month or so?) to get set up and each year our payment again took a week or two to appear - certainly not years!- but it always did. Perhaps the system is overwhelmed at present because I think there is a deadline which has been extended. We never encountered any website issues though and I haven’t seen anything about it being means tested, quite the opposite. Where did you read that?

Do you have a source for the means testing info? Never heard that before about the UK one!

Oh that's a good point, I hadn't thought of that. I'm 53 so maybe can just pay yearly contribution for the next 12 years?

I got my letter back from HMRC yesterday. They have assessed me thus (all in pounds):

2013-2014 up to 2018-2019, 824.20 per year. Must pay within 31 days.
2019-2020, 824.20 payable by 5/4/26.
2020-2021 up to 2024-2025, around 180.00 per year, payable yearly between 2026-2031.
Total 11,600 ish. I've got the money, but $23,000 is a huge hit to my savings.

Letter says I can pay all the above (other than 2024-2025) within 31 days to avoid penalty. Doesn't say what the penalty is though.

So, maybe I can ignore 2013-2020, and just pay yearly at the 180-ish rate from 2020-2021 onwards and I'll be all caught up?

Think I need to make a call to HMRC.

Interesting that you had the higher quote for the earlier years, then lower since 2020? But that aside, it would seem a better use of your money to just pay the lower rate for the recent years, bearing in mind your age. If you can speak to HMRC, that would be a sensible check. We found them very helpful and informative.

SORTED!

First of all, isn't there such a huge difference in customer service. I can't say that anyone I spoke to at HMRC and DWP this evening was unhelpful, quite the opposite, but there were clearly not thrilled about having to work... anyway...

As suggested, all those years at the rate 824.20 are basically irrelevant since I have enough time ahead of me to make up years at the cheaper class 2 rate; and I got my application into HMRC in time to not incur any penalties, etc. Five years of class two = 845.00 precisely.

Transferred that amount to my Nationwide UK account in seconds (wise.com), then bank transfer to HRMC. Done. Now I'm in the system I should just receive a yearly bill at the class 2 rate of 180.00-odd or whatever it is at the time. Equivalent of about A$400/year or less. I can live with that.

Thanks everyone. You've been awesome as always. I appreciate you

Hi, when I moved back to Blighty after 20 years in Aus I looked into just this. I ended up paying £980 "top up" into my pension. My pension went from £788 to £921 pcm, a difference of £133 a month. 980 / 133 = 7.34, so in 8 months I'm in profit. Worth it in my book.

I've been posting this repeatedly here on BE for at least a decade.

It's a bit daft not to. I appreciate it may be difficult doing it from Aus, but short term pain for long term gain.

I agree. It's as close to "free money" as I have ever found, other than picking up pennies in the street.