Martin Lewis urges state pensioners to spend £31 straight away

Martin Lewis has urged state pensioners to consider parting with £31 – in a bid to boost their payments from the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). The BBC and ITV star appealed for DWP state pensioners on a recent edition of his 8pm Tuesday night show.

One viewer, Paula, wrote in last week’s Summer Special after taking Mr Lewis’s lucrative advice to share her success. Paula said: “I looked up your special pension and then checked and found that a £31 payment would get us an extra year’s pension worth thousands.”

Mr Lewis said: “So £31 would be a payment for part of the year. Each additional year of pension is worth £300 a year. If he lives for 60 years on a pension, £31 would turn into an inflation-proof £6,000.” The payment was made as a voluntary national insurance contribution.

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Money Saving Expert (MSE) founder Mr Lewis described it as “the biggest, single and possible money saver you can get” for people aged 45-70. The consumer expert and financial guru added: “It’s worth a fortune to a lot of people. .”

The Government recently announced another extension to the deadline for filling in gaps in your National Insurance (NI) record. Until 5 April 2025, you may be able to fill gaps in your NI record from as far back as 2006. Filling the gaps could increase your State Pension by thousands of pounds.

A qualifying year is a tax year in which at least one of these scenarios was relevant to you, you were working and therefore paying NI contributions, receiving NI credits or paying voluntary NI contributions (sometimes called ‘buying years of insurance national ‘).

To get any state pension you normally need ten years of qualification. You usually need 35 to get the full State Pension, but this can be different depending on your situation. Years or part years in which you paid no NI contributions (voluntary or otherwise) or received NI credits may result in a gap in your record.

Gaps can occur for a number of reasons – for example, if you’ve moved abroad or been unemployed and didn’t claim benefits.