brit4

Hello!

I currently live in the US; moved here in 2014 temporarily, but now don't envisage moving back to the UK. I wonder if anyone can give advice on whether or not voluntary national insurance contributions will be worthwhile?

Looking online, I have 7 years of full contributions, and 6 spotty years of partial contributions that the website tells me I can make up. Has anyone done this calculation for themselves, and can give advice on whether or not they think it worthwhile to continue to contribute to get the full state pension?

Cheers!

tbm

If you qualify for class 2 contributions (roughly speaking, if you worked since coming to the US and in the UK before) I think it's a no brainer to buy as long as you can (April 2018).

Whether class 3 contributions make sense is another question.

See also http://britishexpats.com/forum/usa-5...-874408/page5/

Asg123

Class 3 is also good value. If you compare what you'd be paying to the amount you'd have to pay to get an equivalent annuity in the market, you'll see that it's a lot less.

AmanSood

Under the new state pension rules you would need at least 10 qualifying years to get a UK state pension when you retire. Given you say you have 7 qualifying years, you only need to top up your contributions for 3 years (voluntary Class 2 NIC) to get the state pension. Voluntary class 2 NIS is only £2.80 a week so definitely worth doing especially if you don't think you will return to the UK.

tbm

Just to clarify that 10 qualifying years won't get you the full state pension (you need 35 years for that). But I agree that buying at least 3 more years to get to 10 years makes sense.

Phoodilicious

I recently wrote to the UK and asked for my statement of qualifying years which they sent back within about 6 weeks with the amount it would cost to catch up on the years from 2011 when I left (Class 2) and how to pay them if I wanted.