Hugh

Done a bit of household accounts admin for SWMBO.

Dropped her O2 monthly (sim only) bill from £14.03 to £6.99 through Uswitch (with data doubled to 20Gb), and checked her NI contributions for her State Pension (after setting up her GOV.UK account - nice and simple as long as you have the NI Number, passport, & driving licence info).

She was 2.5 years short of contributions for a full State Pension (she retired from work six months before her 60th birthday, and her State Pension will begin June 2027), so the site lets you know what the shortfall you need to contribute is to get the full State Pension, and we calculated the the return over expenditure (what we needed to pay against how long she would have to collect State Pension for it to be cost-neutral) was two years, so we paid it - if she lives to the U.K. female average life-expectancy of 83, she will have gained nearly £13k in State Pension payments over the amount we paid.

I would recommend everyone to check their State Pension forecast, to enable them (if they wish/can afford to) to remedy any shortfalls in NI contributions - it can be worth it.