Check your govt pensions! The ever-reliable Martin Lewis summarises the situation - only 1 month left to topup missing years from as far back as 2006.

Detailed Guide - Aged 45 to 70? Urgently consider buying national insurance years - You may be able to turn £800 into £5,500 in your state pension

My wife has been on hold at HMRC for each of the last four working days.  She gives up after 58 mins as we 'only' have an hour free on our landline package.

She got her state pension quote OK then got through to speak to someone about how much each mssing year would cost.  They then said there appeared to be a problem with her tax record so could not guarantee the quote even. 

Posted by: @ricinus

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She gives up after 58 mins as we 'only' have an hour free on our landline package.

I had a similar issue dealing with my bank - phone calls limited to 1 hour.

So I bought unlimited phone credit from Skype for £2.40 for the whole month - worked very well. (I do have Office 365 though, so unsure of the pricing outside of that). And then 'saynoto0870' gives geo equivalents to premium/free numbers.

I've got 1 partial year since 2006, but only need to make 4 more full years to qualify for a full pension anyway. And either 14 or 15 years to go until pension age, depending on if the planned increase happens.

There is now a message while you are on hold saying if you can't get throught then blame Martin Lewis. 

Only joking, but they do say they will consider late applications because of the demand.

My wife gave up after 7 hours, rang back the pension quote people who then put her through to the next step for a reference number.

She then went to her own bank to do a bank transfer to HMRC but they refused without photo ID as they thought it was a scam!!!!

The planned increase to the pension age is apparently looking likely, though it's likely to be phased in over 8 years. Luckily for me I'm quite near the starting birthday bracket, so should only be an extra month or so to work.

@ricinus ... looks like the deadline is now extended to 31 July - better than nowt, but weird they didn't just add on an extra year - it's free upfront money for the govt coffers.

The deadline for contributions was previously set at April 5 2023 – but customer phonelines have been busy with people trying to make top-ups – and the Government has now confirmed an extension to July 31.

https://twitter.com/HMRCpressoffice/status/1633065823458738181?s=20

This is incredible ...

the free FT link should work for now, and here's a discussion by Richard Murphy - at a time when the Bank Of England is stating that we must all accept that we are poorer now ...

The rise of LVMH, Europe’s largest company (includes Cheval Blanc and Louis Vuitton, etc) - just 3 years ago, the LVMH Chairman Bernard Arnault was worth $113 billion (5th richest in the world), today he’s worth $210 billion (richest in the world).

https://www.ft.com/content/72208629-1213-4ece-b405-1e2c21c08868

Have you/spouse topped up your NI contributions towards your state pension/s yet ?

Excellent explainer video here ...