Spanish retirement pension

Thank you Moonbeam and I agree, it would be good to have some real clarity!  Would you happen to know how they calculate it for people paying self employed autonomo in Spain then as my payments do not change each month and thus my contributions are not affected by my salary.  I have always paid autonomo in Spain

What will happen is that they will calculate it on the contributions you make yourself as an autonomo. 

Some autonomos make only the legal minimum contributions necessary, then hike them up to the maximum for the last 15 years before retirement age.  From 50 onwards if you intend to retire at 65.  This could be a bit dodgy now as it is very likely that the period of calculation for contributions will change to a 20 year period.  So the period to look at is from 45 onwards.

The one good point is that being an autonomo you yourself can decide how much you want to contribute - it is not just based on your earnings.  In theory you could earn a relatively low salary, but decide to make quite high contributions for a good pension.  There is a maximum you can contribute each month and a maximum pension you can receive each month.  Unless you are a fat cat politician!

However, it should be ´within reason´ - if you only declare your earnings as 100 euros each month and then make the maximum contributions it could redflag Hacienda!!!!  So you would need to be prepared to be able to explain how you are able to do this without them digging around for black money.

I´m not sure what the maximum autonomo contributions are at the moment - perhaps around 400 euros per month for 2010?

Hope this helps. 

Would like to say that I´m new to this website and have found that it´s a really friendly informative site!

Hi MexMaya

Forgot to mention that the 400 or so euros is probably the maximum contribution only after the age of 50.  Before this age you can contribute a lot more, depending on earnings to contribution ratio of course.    The minimum of about 200 or so euros doesn´t change much, only the maximum.  This is to stop autonomas just ´buying´ a pension in the latter years when the calculations are so important.

However, if you are a politician you only need to contribute for 7 years to get a nice fat pension!!!

Anyone got any news on the new changes to the Spanish pension system.  I have just over 15 yrs contributions in Spain and 22 years in UK.  I will be 65 in 2013.  Have been told that Spanish pension age to rise to 67.  Does this apply to everyone as from now or is there a staggered change?  As someone else mentioned, even the Seguridad Social and the British authorities can not agree on the correct situation.  Claiming my wife's UK State Pension last year was a nightmare.  UK sent her a form to claim it then said that she had to claim in Spain.  Seg Soc. provided a form that requested lot of irrelevant info for UK pension e.g children's NIE numbers, salaries in UK employment etc.  All possibly needed for Spanish pension application but this was a form in Spanish to claim a standard UK pension.  Next problem will be when my wife wants to add her 15 years contributions in Spain to her already claimed UK pension

When my brother who lives in Germany was coming up to retirement he went to the German soc.sec. office . When they asked in what other countries he had paid & he replied the UK they did it all for him. He receives a full German pension & a Uk pension for the 12 years he paid in their.

As you are retiring after the rule change in 2010 you  only need 30 years contributions for a full UK pension. You'll receive               22 / 30ths of a full UK pension. Just over 73%. For the Spanish pension ,unless they've changed it , you'll receive a 50% pension + however many years over 15 as a % of the other half.

Unless you've got a country that's willing to do the claiming for you , like the Germans, you're better off claiming each pension from each country yourself without involving the other countries.