If you do not earn enough to pay National Insurance (NI) in the UK (less than £125 per week or £6,500 per year for 2025/26), you will not build up qualifying years for the full State Pension. However, you may be eligible for NI credits (if claiming benefits) or can pay voluntary contributions to fill gaps.
Is it worth paying gaps in my National Insurance? Much depends on whether you are going to get to the critical level of (at least) 35 years in the future anyway, for instance through working between now and retirement. There is no point paying for a top up that gives you no benefit.
If you have fewer than the full number of qualifying years, your basic State Pension will be less than £176.45 per week. Check your National Insurance record to find out how many qualifying years you have.
Primary Threshold (PT)
This is the point at which employees start paying National Insurance. The Primary Threshold is £12,570 for the 2025/26 tax year, which is aligned with the standard Personal Allowance for Income Tax. This means you won't pay a penny in NI or Income Tax until your earnings exceed this amount.
If you have never worked and therefore never paid any National Insurance through your salary, you won't typically be eligible for any State Pension.
You usually need 35 qualifying years of National Insurance (NI) contributions to get the full State Pension. If you don't have enough, you can pay to fill gaps in your record to boost how much you get – even if you're already getting your State Pension.
You usually need 35 qualifying years of National Insurance contributions to get the full amount.
If you work abroad, you will usually pay social security contributions (called National Insurance contributions in the UK) in the country where you're working. You might have to pay National Insurance in the UK while you're working abroad. You might also need to get a certificate to show that you pay in the UK.
The number of Pay-Related Social Insurance (PRSI) contributions you have made is the main determining factor for state pension eligibility. As of 2025, you need 520 full-rate PRSI contributions to qualify for the state pension[1].
If you do not pay National Insurance you may have gaps in your National Insurance record. This could be because you were: employed but had low earnings. unemployed and were not claiming benefits.
Iceland, Denmark, and the Netherlands have the most financially sustainable pension systems due to well-balanced contribution rates and participation.
As I mentioned earlier, the ATO's view is that where we fail to meet a minimum pension payment, the pension stops at the start of the year that the failure occurred. So, in my earlier example we didn't pay our minimum pension payment in the 2025 financial year, our pension was deemed stopped on 1 July 2024.
After 5 April 2025 you'll only be able to pay for voluntary contributions for the past 6 years. This may not be enough to qualify for a new State Pension if you have fewer than 4 qualifying years on your National Insurance record. You'll usually need at least 10 qualifying years in total.
Retiring at 60 with $500,000 in super is possible but challenging, depending heavily on your spending, lifestyle, and if you qualify for the Australian Age Pension. You might cover modest expenses using strategies like drawing down around $20,000 annually (using the 4% rule as a guide) plus other income, but it requires careful budgeting, potentially part-time work, and reducing living costs. A financial advisor can help tailor a plan, as $500k alone usually supports a basic to moderate retirement, not a lavish one.
Claim State Pension abroad. You can claim State Pension abroad if you've paid enough UK National Insurance contributions to qualify.
Although paying voluntary NI contributions can be extremely valuable, whether it's right for you will depend on your circumstances. It's worth seeing if you can fill any gaps for free with NI credits. Claims for these can often be backdated many years.
To be eligible for the State Pension you must have reached State Pension age and have paid at least 10 years of National Insurance (NI) contributions. To receive the full State Pension you must have paid 35 years of NI contributions.
You may inherit part of or all of your partner's extra State Pension or lump sum if: they died while they were deferring their State Pension (before claiming) or they had started claiming it after deferring. they reached State Pension age before 6 April 2016. you were married or in the civil partnership when they died.
From 20 September 2025, the full pension is available, under the assets test, for homeowner singles whose assessable assets are under $321,500 – for homeowner couples the number is $481,500. The numbers for non-homeowners are $579,500 and $739,500 respectively.
If you retire before age 65, it's considered an early retirement. If you have at least 10 years of service credit and are 55 or older, you can choose to retire early, but your benefit will be reduced. There is less of a reduction if you have 30 or more years of service credit.
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At current annuity rates, those two combined should give most people an after-tax income of about £1,700 a month*. We say “should” because the exact annuity income you'll get is difficult to predict. Annuity rates go up and down as the markets change.
How to increase your retirement income