PaulWy

Hello,

My situation is that I'm 51 years old and living/working in the US but will almost certainly retire in UK or IRE. Currently I have:
- Last 32 US quarters/credits
- Prior 7 years UK National Insurance contributions

I understand that US has reciprocal Social Security arrangements with UK and Ireland. I don't know what this means as applied to my circumstances and when it comes time for me to 'settle down'. Some questions then:
- How should I be thinking about this?!
- Is there likely to be a preferential circumstance between claiming in US vs UK?
- Could I claim _anything_ in Ireland where I have not made any contributions?

I expect I'll need to get more formal advice at some stage and, to that end, I would welcome any recommendations. I have heard good things about Social Security Solutions (socialsecuritysolutions.com) but has been in regard to domestic US planning, again would welcome any thoughts.

Thank you in advance for any guidance.

Regards,
Paul

Pulaski

Play your cards right and you can claim in both. ..... I am on track to retire with a full UK state pension (less a reduction for a few years when I was opted out of SERPS), and full, unWEPed Socialtext Security.

Make additional payments to British NI - request/apply for Class 2 (it takes a few weeks) and you should be able to pay for 2017-2018 for about £145, and the past six years at the same rate, so just a hair over £1,000 for seven years of contributions. So that would give you 14/35 of a UK state pension.

After 2017-2018 Class 2 is being withdrawn for expats, but you could continue contributing at the Class 3 rate of about £715/yr. If you carry on working until you're 67 and assuming the rules don't change again, you should be able to add a further 15 years of NI, so add that to the 14 years I mentioned above and you'd have 29/35 of a UK state pension in addition to your US SS entitlement, which is currently 8 years, but if you carry on working in the US could reach 23 years. .... There will be some WEP reduction (because you won't reach the 30 years required to escape WEP) in respect of your UK state pension - look for the very large and still currently active thread on US SS, pensions, and WEP.