Wednesday, March 25, 2009

April 5 2009 deadline for buying back UK Social Security



My day was going quite well until I started reading my email. A kind relative reminded me that there is an April 5 deadline for buying back 1999-2000, 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 UK Social Security. You can also buy back 2006-7 without penalty until April 5th but you have until April 5 2013 to do it at a higher rate. Apparently for every year you buy back you get another L.157 added to your pension, so if you can survive around three years after retirement age you are winning. I'd say it's a risk worth taking, but in my case it requires finding something over L.1000 in short order. The good news, from my point of view, is that the pound is as low as it has been in years.

This being Wednesday morning, I double parked my car to allow for street cleaning, setting an alarm to remind me to move it back again at 10 a.m. The alarm went off at about 9:40, just a little too early to go down, so I sat down again and began figuring out how to save money in the long run by paying Her Majesty's Customs and Excise before April 5.

When I next looked up from my calculations, it was 10:05. Anyone lucky--or perhaps the proper word is stupid--enough to own a car in New York City will know that if 10:00 is your time, 10:05 is already too late, unless you are very very lucky. I went down, and found the expected orange envelope stuffed under the wiper.

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Anglo-Brooklyn by Joy Holland is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.