What Is My Retirement Age?

Last updated on March 1st, 2024

The question here may apply to any type of pension but in this post we will be addressing the more specific question of What Is My State Retirement Age?

By leading you through some questions we will try and make it easy for you to determine when exactly you are able to draw your state pension – in the past, men and women had different retirement ages but these have now been equalised and men and women retire at the same age.

Gone are the days when men retired at age 65 and women at age 60 and this is for a number of reasons –

  • Firstly there was a lot of focus on equalising pension ages to start off with in the occupation pensions sector, following the Barber v Guardian Royal Exchange judgement in the European court which rules that it was unlawful for occupational pension schemes to have different retirement ages for men and women.
  • Secondly the demographic profile in the UK meant that there was a much larger percentage of the population that were entitled to retirement benefits thus increasing the massive cost burden on the state,
  • Thirdly the increased life expectancy meant that pensions were being paid for longer and again increasing the burdening costs of providing a state pension. Added to this people were starting to work for longer with increased health and it was not necessarily appropriate to have a retirement age set at a point where the majority of people were still able and happy to keep working.

So, to figure out what your retirement age will be in the current system we will ask you a number of questions which will point you to the next step in determining your state pension age.

So first question is:

Were you born after 5th April 1978?

Then your current SPa is your 68th birthday. You can click on the search bar and search for your particular year of birth for further information.

Were you born between 6th April 1977 and 5th April 1978?

Check out this page for the current legislation. Alternatively you can enter your year of birth in the search bar (on the right hand side on desktop devices and right at the top on mobile devices), and you should get a page dedicated to your year of birth.

Otherwise, if you were

born before 6th April 1977

You can go to this page.