Over 200,000 people could be missing out on thousands of pounds over their lifetimes, according to MoneySavingExpert, Martin Lewis.
He returned to his ITV1 Martin Lewis Money Show Live on Tuesday with two key bits of advice that could save viewers up to £48,000.
Firstly, he advised people to check that the right person in their relationship was claiming National Insurance credits.
He said: “You build up National Insurance years which gives you how much of the full state pension you get in the end.
“Those who are not working or earning less than £123 a week are due National Insurance credits for childcare.
“However for many people in that circumstance, it is their partner who is working who does the childcare claim, not them.
Martin Lewis returned to his ITV show on Tuesday— (Martin Lewis Money Show Live/ITV)
“But the working partner already gets National Insurance Credits because they’re working. So you want a non-working partner to be getting the credits, and they therefore need to be the one who is getting the benefit.”
He then advised viewers that the Gov.uk form that needs to be filled out is the CF11A.
Mr Lewis said this was absolutely “crucial” and advised those not working to ensure that the child benefit was in the name of the person who was not working.
For those whose partners were earning over £60,000, he added that the other person should still claim it and then opt out of the payment to ensure that they get the child tax National Insurance credits.
Each year boosts your pension by £800 up to a maximum of eight years. This boosts the final state pension of £2,400 a year, he then calculated that over twenty years this could be a boost of £48,000 extra to your final state pension.
But children or not, Martin believes there are two checks that every person should make:
“Go to gov.uk and check your National Insurance record to see if you have any missing years.
“And then check your state pension forecast to see if you’re on track to get the full state pension. If you’re not entitled to free years in other allocations, you are able to buy back years and for a payment of £800 it could be worth up to £5,000 over your state pension life.”
