Money expert Martin Lewis is urging anyone aged 40 to 73 to get extra money added to their pension pot before an urgent April deadline – after one woman followed his advice and got £118,000.
The money expert returned on the latest episode of The Martin Lewis Money Show Live on Tuesday where he gave his audience another reminder to check if they need to buy back any missing National Insurance years in their record before the scheme removes 13 years from the system in April. For anyone within 35-ish years of retirement, it’s worth checking now to see if you have any missing National Insurance years in your record. You need a full record of about 35 years of paying NI to qualify for a full state pension payout, which will be about £230 a week from April.
If you don’t have a full record, you won’t get the maximum amount, which is where the NI buy-back comes in. It costs about £300 to buy a missing year for your record, but it can add thousands of pounds to your state pension payout. But 13 years currently available to buy for your records will be unavailable after April.
Martin Lewis said: “This is absolutely massive.”
Co-host Jeanette Kwayke then read out a letter from a woman who had written to Martin to tell him how she had managed to scoop a simply staggering amount extra in her pension after watching his show.
She said: “This is amazing, it’s come in from Tracey. She wrote: ‘Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention. I’ve now paid an additional 18 years of Class 2 National Insurance contributions which cost me £2,968.25. This has increased my state pension from £69.62 per week to £183.28 per week. As it stands, I reckon this has given me an additional £5,915.52 pension per year. If I live 20 years, that’s an incredible £118,310.40 extra. Wow, unbelievable.”
Martin added: “Let me repeat. This is a must check if you’re aged 40 to 73. Watch the full programme on the 4th of March. It’s absolutely crucial and then it disappears and we won’t be talking about it again.”
The Martin Lewis Money Show Live National Insurance buyback episode from March 4 is still available on ITVX, as is the March 18 episode from Tuesday.
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