Hi all,
Just wondered if anyone can shed some light on the UK state pension.
I'm now a US citizen since January and I paid all my missing back paid NICS last year.
When I spoke to the UK dept of works and pensions last year they said it was all paid up, I was actually given the incorrect amount to pay initially and they sent a cheque back to me for the overpayment.
I have just started to receive payments.
The letter says I will receive weekly rate of 227.39 sterling.
I know the full pension is 230.25.
I realise it is only a couple of pounds difference but it was bugging me..lol
I phoned to ask yesterday and the girl I spoke to seemed unsure of the reason too and said she would look into it.
I'm assuming it is fees for Uk to change the amount into dollars maybe?
It's not a big deal only 11.00 sterling a month.
Anyone had a similar situation and an answer?

If you have 35 years full contributions then the usual reason for receiving less than the full pension is that you were contracted out. That could have been voluntarily if you elected to have some of your NI contributions diverted to a private pension, or more commonly at some point you belonged to a UK company scheme that was contracted out, many were. If the latter you would not necessarily be aware of the fact that you were contracted out. In both cases you (or your company) paid a lower NI rate and the assumption is that you or your company used the NI savings to boost your private or company pension. The reduction is the amount that they think you should have benefited by due to the reduced NI contributions.

There is no fee to get paid in USD, the amount you receive is fixed in pounds but will vary every month with the exchange rate.

Ahh ok, many thanks that makes more sense.
I suppose I thought that because I had paid up missing years for the nics, which were the years after I came to US, to get to the full 35 years that I would get the full amount. I didnt realise that if I had opted out years those weren't made up with the money I sent also, to get me to the full 230 sterling.
As I said it is only a few pounds/dollars per month, I just couldnt understand why.
Many thanks for explaining, I can stop it nagging at me now

Anyone who has a deduction because they were contracted out can still achieve the full pension by continuing to contribute full NI years beyond the 35 require to achieve the full pension. Each additional year will earn 1/35 of the full pension, or £6.58 per week at today’s rates. I don’t know if you can do it now that you are receiving the state pension, and it probably isn’t worth your time because you are only short of a few pounds, but it is useful information for others who will have a deduction.

The state pension forecast will identify if such a deduction will apply, and if so identify it as COPE (Contracted Out Pension Equivalent). To earn that deduction back take the COPE amount, divide it by the full weekly pension/35, round up the result to the nearest integer and that is how many additional years are required to achieve the full pension. For example if the COPE deduction was £23.27 then 23.27/(230.25/35) =3.53, rounded up is 4. That means you will need 35+4 years to attain the full pension. It is well worth buying those additional years, and although the last year will provide a marginal return it is nice to get the full pension and makes it easy to determine if the amount is correct each year when cost of living increases are applied.

It used to not be possible, but I was corrected a few months ago, maybe last year, here on BE by someone who reported that it is now possible to contribute to a UK state pension that is already being drawn.
Maybe, maybe not - if all that is needed is one year at the Class 2 rate to get that £11/mth shortfall, then the cost would be £182 and the payback period would be 16½ months, which as investments go, is a pretty good pay back period - it would be arguably equivalent to an interest rate of 72.75%. ... you get 72.75% of your money back in the first 12 months, and the remainder back in the first 4½ months of the following year ..... and of course continue to receive payments of 72.75% (of the £182 cost) per annum, for the rest of your life.

If the requirement was two years at £182, then the deal would only be half as good, and if it took three years, it would only be one third as good, but still only a little worse than the payback period for Class3 contributions - though probably not worth the trouble.

Thanks to both of you for the explanations.
I understand it much more clearly now than when the Dept of Pensions tried to explain it..lol.
I thought, last year, when talking to them that I was paying up as much as possible to cover all missing or short years to get to the full pension and I'm almost 100% certain that the girl I spoke to back then told me that was the case. I can't access the pension site unfortunately because I dont have any current British documentation and I never received a letter confirming it back then. Maybe wires got crossed and that was why they returned some money to me, thinking I'd overpaid.
Anyway that's all useful information to anyone in a similar situation.
I'll see if anything comes from my conversation with them this week, I did ask if they could mail or email a statement to me.

I don't think this is true for everyone.
I was eligible for the pension shortly after the major change to the calculations in 2016.
Due to my works pension being opted-out, I only received two thirds of the full pension.
I was told there was no means by which I could improve this.
This message, of not being able to improve the pension, was given to me again, in the last couple of years, when there was a lot of media interest at a time when the ability to pay for extra years was extended by the government.

Perhaps there is caveat here which is that you can only contribute to future NI years or backfill prior NI years if you are/were eligible to do so in those years.

To be eligible for future contributions you must be below state pension age. To backfill the prior 6 years you would need to have been below state pension age in those years which is why you would have been unable to take that route after 2016. Prior to April of this year it was possible to backfill the years 2006-2016 but it was age dependent, not everyone qualified and if you reached state pension age in the 2016 frame time you would have been right on the edge of being eligible to do that, I don’t recall the exact age conditions but my guess is that you did not qualify to backfill those years, or those years already had full contributions.

That is sometimes the problem, no matter how many years short you are, you can only contribute for years for which you have not already made contributions.

Under the "standard rules" (not the recently ended concession), you can only contribute for current plus six most recent years, but if you have been in the habit of contributing every year for the past decade, then there are no available years for you within the "six most recent years" window, so all you can do is add one more year of contributions each year as years pass, and you might run out of time before you retire.