Savings Credit

[ladywoman]

Hi all,

Does anyone know how you claim for Savings Credit from the government? It is an additional payment on top of your pension rewarded if you have saved towards or your retirement unlike pension credit which you can claim if you have no savings

[MartinMillar]

The government will give people a little extra money to reward them for saving towards their retirement. This comes in the form of savings credit. Savings credit is only available for people who reached state retirement age before April 2016. However, if you're in a couple and your partner reached state pension age before 6 April 2016, you could still qualify. There's a few criteria that you needed to meet (and still do) before you qualified for savings credit: you have a minimum income of £150.47 a week if you're single, and £239.17 a week if you're in a couple in 2020/21 you or your partner must be 65 or over you must be living in the UK you must have made some provisions for your retirement, such as savings or a second pension. The maximum savings credit you can get per week is £13.97 for a single person and £15.62 for couples. However, the more money you have, the less you get in savings credit. For every £1 by which your income exceeds the savings-credit threshold (£150.47 a week if you're single, and £239.17 a week if you're in a couple), your savings credit is reduced by 40p. All of your income is added together to work out how much you'll get. If you have any savings, the first £10,000 isn't counted. Then every £500 you have over that amount counts as £1 of income. How do I calculate savings credit? Say you have an income of £134.25 a week from the basic state pension, and an income of £31.75 a week from a private pension. You also have £12,000 worth of savings. Under the savings credit rules, this counts as £4 of weekly income (£12,000-£10,000/£500). Your total weekly income would be £170. Your weekly income is around £20 over the savings-credit threshold. This means you would qualify for around £12 a week of savings credit. If your income is less than or equal to the savings-credit threshold, you won’t qualify for this benefit.

Read more: https://www.which.co.uk/money/pensions-and-retirement/state-pension/your-state-pension-and-benefits/pension-credit-aj4ck5n7vl9q#headline_3 - Which?

[ladywoman]

Thanks for that Martin Millar. I am ok with how it is worked out but we are being told that you can only claim this if you are eligible for Pension Credit which we are not because we are over the required income threshold, but because we have saved towards our retirement we are supposed to be able to claim savings credit!!! I am totally confused