Only 30 days left to top up your state pension at today's prices

Friends Provident is warning people that the clock is ticking and there are only 30 days left to buy back missing National Insurance (NI) contributions to top up their State pension before the Government hikes up the cost by 49% on 6 April. Friends Provident's handy guide to help people decide whether to act now before it's too late is available at friendsprovident.com/membersite.

From April 2010 the Government is changing the way that entitlement to the basic State pension is calculated. People will require fewer ‘qualifying years' but the cost of buying any missing years will increase at the end of this current tax-year.

Currently, the full basic State pension for a single ‘qualifying' person is £90.70 a week. Worryingly 70 percent of women and 15 per cent of men do not qualify for the full amount, yet more than half (57 per cent) of adults are planning to solely or partly use the state pension to fund their retirement, according to recent research conducted by Friends Provident.

To buy back each missing year (up to a maximum of six years) today costs £421.20 but from 6 April it will cost £626.60.

Martin Palmer, head of corporate pensions marketing said: "Up to half a million women who took career breaks to raise a family in the 1970s or people who worked abroad for a number of years could be affected by this cost increase. If you do not think you will have accrued enough NI contributions to qualify for a full basic State Pension by the time you retire you might want to think about acting now to avoid increased expense, disappointment or hardship in the future."