i've been working full time in the Netherlands for 11 years now, but expect to move back to the UK within a couple of years.

I'm wondering about my state pension entitlement.

In the Uk I will have to have paid 44 years of NI contributions to qualify for the full State Pension. But I was told that in the netherlands you only have to work 15 full years to be eligible.

Can anyone confirm this?

I also understand that when I get to retirement age I will be able to choose which pension I receive, or opt for a combination of both. Retirement age is still 24 years away for me - but it might be worth me staying on an extra couple of years here, in order to be sure of getting the slightly more generous Dutch pension when the time comes.

All advice welcome

Rod

The UK is now only 30 years! This was recently introduced. As you are living abroad you can get a pension forecast. The 15 years in the NL bit doesn’t sound correct – I thought it was much more but I’m not sure. I called an information line in the UK about the pension changes there and was told that if I had sufficient contributions in both countries then I would receive a pension from both but if not then the contributions from one would be added to the other. 24 years is a long way off so things are probably going to change in that time. I don’t know about the Netherlands but in the UK you can make voluntary contributions if you are missing some years and it is only a few hundred pounds for each year so maybe you can do that here.

Thanks for the Advice :-)
Rod

I do know that you can pay the few hundred a year to catch up with missed payments in the UK.

When I was first here 6 years ago I used to chat to a friend of my father in law and he had worked in the UK and received a full pension from his job also his full state pension from NL's. I couldn't quite work out how he'd managed to wangle that one? but he used to always tell me how lucky he was to get both pensions?