What is the impact of a career break on your State Pension?
A career break costs a qualifying year only where nothing is paid and nothing is credited. Most breaks — for childcare, for caring, for illness, for unemployment — carry credits, and the credit follows a claim rather than the circumstance. A year at home with a child under 12 and no Child Benefit claim is the classic gap.
- The cost: an uncredited year is one of the 35 you need, worth about £358 a year for life.
- Childcare: a Child Benefit claim credits the claimant while a child is under 12.
- Caring: Carer's Allowance or Carer's Credit covers 20 or more hours a week of caring.
- Study and travel: generally not credited, and the years most often left as genuine gaps.
01 What is credited and what is not
Years at home with a child under 12 are credited to whoever claims Child Benefit. Years spent caring 20 or more hours a week are credited through Carer's Allowance or Carer's Credit. Periods on Jobseeker's Allowance, Employment and Support Allowance and certain other benefits carry credits too.
What is generally not credited is time spent studying, travelling, or taking an unpaid break for any other reason. Those years are the genuine gaps, and they have to be filled by voluntary contributions if they are to count.
Working part time can also produce a gap, because a qualifying year requires earnings at or above the lower earnings limit. Steady low-paid work across a whole year can fail the test that a few months at a decent salary passes.
Source: National Insurance credits
02 The claim, not the circumstance
Credits attach to claims. A parent at home who never claimed Child Benefit — commonly because the High Income Child Benefit Charge would have clawed it back — has no credit for those years, even though they were doing exactly what the credit exists for.
The fix is to claim and elect to receive nil payment, which avoids the charge and preserves the credit. Backdating is limited to three months, so the years already lost are lost.
Credits already given to the wrong partner can be transferred for past years using the relevant form, which is the cheapest repair available and is worth checking in any household where the higher earner made the claim.
Source: Child Benefit
03 Filling what is left
Where a year genuinely cannot be credited, voluntary contributions can fill it — normally within six tax years, with transitional extensions for years affected by the 2016 reform. A filled year adds about £358 a year of State Pension for life.
Whether it is worth paying depends on the forecast rather than on the gap. Someone already on track for the full rate gains nothing from an extra year, and the forecast is the only number that settles it.
Read the record before the payment window closes on the earliest gap year. That deadline is the only genuinely urgent part of this, and it moves every April.
Shows: what uncredited career-break years cost in State Pension, and what filling them would buy. Ignores: whether you need the years at all, the payment window, and any contracted-out deduction.
On the defaults above, the worked example shows £1,434 a year. Filling 4 years costs £3,827 and adds £1,434 a year for life — but only if your forecast is short of the full rate.
Source: Voluntary National Insurance
A career break does not cost you a State Pension year — an uncredited career break does, and the difference is a claim. The one that catches households is Child Benefit: a parent at home who never claimed because the charge would take it back has no credit for those years, and backdating only covers three months. Claim it and elect nil payment. And if the claim went in the higher earner's name, the credits can be transferred to the partner who actually needs them. That is a form, and it is worth thousands.
FAQ
Does time at home with children count?
Yes, but only if a Child Benefit claim exists in that person's name while the child is under 12. The credit follows the claim rather than the circumstance, which is why so many parents have gaps.
What about a year spent studying or travelling?
Generally not credited. Those are the genuine gaps and they have to be filled by voluntary contributions if they are to count, normally within six tax years of the year concerned.
Does part-time work count?
Only if earnings reach the lower earnings limit for the year. Steady low-paid work across the whole year can fail the test that a few months at a decent salary would pass, because the year is binary.
Sources
Regulator references
- National Insurance credits · GOV.UK · 2025The circumstances in which a qualifying year is credited rather than paid for.Last verified: 2026-09-07
- Child Benefit · GOV.UK · 2025The claim that carries the National Insurance credit for a parent at home.Last verified: 2026-09-07
- Voluntary National Insurance · GOV.UK · 2025Class 2 and Class 3 rates and the deadlines for filling a gap year.Last verified: 2026-09-07
Calculator unit tests · the assertions this page's worked example is checked against, and their last result
Changelog
- 2026-09-07 — initial publish (new format)
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Jordan Reeves
Founder of Talk Through Wealth. A software engineer for over a decade before turning to retirement planning, Jordan built the projection engine after watching family members get fragmented, country-by-country advice that never reconciled. He writes about retirement the way the engine computes it: month-by-month, lifetime-long, and skeptical of any rule of thumb that hasn't been run through the math.