A woman has revealed she bagged herself £18,000 from DWP after following advice shared by Money Saving Expert founder, Martin Lewis. During last night's (Oct 25) instalment of the Martin Lewis Money Show on ITV, co-host Angelica Bell showed the email the woman sent regarding her huge payment.
She explained she was only able to get the thousands of pounds from the taxman after making use of a pensions tax trick, which many people are not aware of or failing to claim, according to Martin. During the programme, the financial guru went into detail about the 'big money' trick, along with the specific circumstances that make people eligible.
He told people watching the show from home that hundreds of thousands of people, mostly women, could be eligible to be owed at least £6,000 each, as reported by YorkshireLive.
READ MORE: Martin Lewis advises people to use 'stoozing' technique to get free money
In the email sent in from the woman, she wrote: "After watching your show on married women's state pension, I contacted the tax department and, although it did take about 7 months, I received a cheque for £18,000. I was amazed as I never expected this amount!"
Martin then went on to break down the complicated set of circumstances that could make someone eligible to claim the money.
He said: "There are hundreds of thousands of, generally women, who are due at least £6,000 pension back. Married women and widows may have been underpaid, specifically women who hit state pension age before April 6, 2016.
"So that's people aged approximately 70 or older. And your basic state pension needed to be 60 per cent of your husband's basic state pension and this is only for married couples.
"Now, you will get an automatic top up and it should be backdated. If your husband was 65 on or after March 17 2008, or you're a widow whose husband died after April 2008 and you're getting less than 60 per cent of his pension."
He added: "But you still need to claim. There are free tools online and you can call the pension service to do it. If you divorced after getting your state pension, and your pension is less than your ex-husband's, again you may be eligible.
"And there's a whole new category since I first did it. This can be a man as well, if you stay at home and look after the kids or you were a carer and you got the benefit for it, since April 1978 then if you don't get a full state pension then you may be entitled to a top up on that.
"As you've seen with Joan [the woman who received an £18,000 cheque], this is really big money."
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