Martin Lewis has stressed the importance of holding onto old paperwork after a woman boosted her pension payments by 20% by digging out payslips from decades ago.
The Call That Changed Everything
On the latest episode of The Martin Lewis Podcast on BBC Sounds and Spotify, the money expert spoke to a caller named Jan. She explained that after reaching her NHS pension age in 2022, she realised the payment amount was incorrect. The NHS pension scheme promises a pension based on 'your best 12 months’ pay', but because Jan had left the NHS and later returned to a lower-paying job after having children, the system had wrongly used the lower salary for the calculation.
Appeal and Discovery
Jan appealed the initial projection, but the appeal was rejected. The NHS had only provided her last year of payslips. Determined, she searched through a box at the back of her wardrobe and found her old payslips from 1990 to 1992. Armed with this evidence, she went back to the NHS.
“The adjudicator said yep you’re right, they’re wrong, and my pension was uprated by 20%,” Jan told Martin. He replied: “20%! Wow. That’s real money. How wonderful.”
Martin’s Advice on Record-Keeping
Reflecting on the case, Martin advised: “People always ask me how long do you keep paperwork for, and the official rule is, whether it’s four or six years depending on your circumstances. My answer is you keep the important stuff forever, it doesn’t have to be paper, you can take a photo and digitise it.”
He added that he wrote a blog in 2010 warning that without paperwork, people might struggle to prove their case because firms often delete old data due to modern data protection rules.
