Did 4 years in the UK? You're exactly 6 years away from a UK State Pension

To get any UK State Pension at all you need 10 qualifying years of National Insurance. Not 10 for a full one. Ten for anything. Nine years doesn't get you nine-tenths of something. It gets you £0, a polite letter, and a strong urge to say “computer says no” in a Little Britain voice.

Your 4 years in the UK count. Your years back in Australia don't (the UK and Australia ended their pension agreement in 2001). So on your own, you're 6 short of the line.

HMRC lets you pay voluntary National Insurance for gaps in the last 6 tax years, even from Australia, as long as you have at least 3 years of UK contributions (tick) or lived there 3 years in a row. Right now, those 6 years are 2020/21 to 2025/26.

6 + 4 = 10. It's almost as if someone designed it. (They didn't. It's a coincidence, and it's about to stop being one.)

And you can't make up the numbers with future years instead. Since 6 April 2026, paying for future years abroad needs 10 years of UK residence or contributions. With 4, these 6 past years are the only way to reach 10.

Jess went to London in 2008 on a working holiday, stayed four years, and came home to Brisbane with a British accent that lasted three weeks. She's 44 now. She has 4 qualifying years.

Class 2 is the cheap one. You qualify if you worked in the UK right before you left, and you've worked in Australia since. That's most returning working-holiday Aussies. Otherwise it's Class 3, which costs more but still pays for itself in under two years of pension.

At the Class 2 rate, that's about the price of a flat white a day for a year. In return you get a pension for the rest of your life.

The deadline is for paying, not just applying. First you apply to HMRC with form CF83, then HMRC writes back to say which years you can buy, then you pay. When my wife applied by post, HMRC took four to five months to reply. Do the maths: if you post a form in February, you may not hear back until after 2020/21 has gone.

And that's if it goes smoothly. Get the CF83 wrong, or get stuck trying to sign in to HMRC from Australia, and you can burn weeks you don't have. I made most of the mistakes so you don't have to.

The form is the bit with the long wait. Send your CF83 in the next few weeks, not the next few months, and get it right first time: there's no time to stuff around. Applying doesn't commit you to paying anything. It just gets HMRC's answer back before 2020/21 runs out, so you can decide then.

• You worked in the UK and paid National Insurance for about 4 years (any passport, any visa).
• You've been back in Australia since before April 2020.
• You're under UK State Pension age (66 to 68, depending on when you were born).

First, check your National Insurance record (opens in a new tab). Four years living in the UK doesn't always mean 4 qualifying years: a year only counts if you earned enough for all of it, so a short first or last year might not. If your record says 4, this page is about you. If it says 5 or more, even better: you have more room. If it says 3, I'm sorry, 6 more only gets you to 9.

1. Your UK National Insurance number is on old payslips and P60s (or the back of a very old drawer). You'll need it for everything below.
2. Your NI record (opens in a new tab) shows your qualifying years. Getting into HMRC's website from Australia is its own adventure.
3. To pay from abroad, you apply with form CF83 (opens in a new tab). HMRC replies with the years you can pay for, and the cost. Getting it right first time matters, because there isn't time for a second go before 5 April 2027.
4. You can run your own numbers in the free calculator.