National Insurance Class 2 payment period

[Neil]

Not a biggie as I’m not worried about the money, but I have 34 years of full contributions (working in the UK then Class 2 in Japan) and 3 years when I didn’t contribute enough. My forecast says to get the full pension I need to pay another 3 years. I thought the full period was now 35 years. Does anyone have any idea why mine is 37 years?

[Sybil]

The retirement age is going to be changed from 65 to 67 (depending when you retire) hence two more years I believe.

[Neil]

That shouldn't affect the fact that 35 is the number of years required contributions.

[RetireJapan]

Probably worth asking them. You can call them cheaply using Skype (but might get the runaround like I do, which takes a bit longer).

[Cheeseman]

The average time for the friendly Geordies in the pension office in the UK to answer is more than 20 minutes.
I have had the phone on speaker for 33 minutes on one occasion.

[Sybil]

The four times I called them, I never waited more than five minutes.

[RetireJapan]

The last time I called, I had to call eleven times to get the correct number to deal with my case

[goodandbadjapan]

The last time I called, I had to call eleven times to get the correct number to deal with my case

I was much the same and often got passed back to the same number I had called earlier and who had passed me on somewhere else.