Loafing Along

Exactly worked before retirement in Spain but took 2 years unemployment benefit before claiming pension as this meant 2 extra years contributions.
UK pension mainly via voluntary contributions when working in Spain.
Pensions not combined paid as 2 separate amounts

1sexsmith

Can you register as unemployed after voluntary leaving your job and still be seen as qualifying even though you wouldn't receive Paro? I assume that is what happened to you because I though Paro was only for a year although you can obviously still be registered

nedcat

Sorry to confuse. To clarify the messed up dates: I’m 64 now, so my retirement age in the UK is July 2026, and in Spain May 2027. So I have a while to go. And I have accessed my forecasts for both countries, so I know what I should get separately: the full UK pension, and 24 years in Spain. But my doubt was about voluntary contributions, as you mentioned you had paid them too. My voluntary UK contributions obviously overlap with my compulsory Spanish contributions, and some have suggested that could actually reduce my pensions, sort cancelling each other out to some extent. My understanding was that under the EU coordination regulation, I would get the full UK pension, and Spain would simply ignore the UK voluntary contribution in its calculation and give me a pension here based on the 24 years. Just wondered if your experience tallies with this.

Loafing Along

Exactly what happened with my 2 pensions.

Mustard

I don't understand why some people imagine that voluntary payments to the UK system would be 'deducted' from the total of contributions paid into the Spanish system.

Why then wouldn't UK private pensions or civil service pensions have the same effect. Even Spanish ´planes de pensiones'. There is no means testing.

The truth is that the UK voluntary contributions are an incredible bargain. They are an exception to the rule 'If someting is too good to be true then it probably is"

I receive a UK State Pension based on my contributions (including voluntary ) and a Spanish State Pension based on my working record here. Totally separate. NO mixing.

Fred James

How many years contributions have you in each country?

Red Eric

As far as I'm aware, the only reasons for Social Security co-ordination initiatives are to ensure that if you've worked in more than one country, you don't lose out in one or more of them when your contributions are tallied up as a ratio of their system. So they ask that each country considers the contributions into their system as a stand-alone scenario, and also as a part of a whole contributed to elsewhere as if it were in their own system. You still only get a payout from each country for the number of years contributed there. But they have to calculate it both ways (so that if there's a higher rate for more years of contributions, or a lower limit you don't reach in any one country, you don't lose out compared to someone who worked all their life in the one country). You get the better of the 2 rates if there's a difference.