I finally managed to send my divorce papers off to the pension service this week.

God I am stupid. The pension service asked me to send my divorce papers off to them asap so that I could claim for the years that I was married and bringing up a child. Although having said that, I did work most of those years anyway, but the system does allow one to claim for all those years regardless of whether one worked or not.

Anyway, as soon as I knew they wanted my divorce papers I started hunting for them. Now, I live in a caravan so there aren't that many places to hunt. On top of that I never throw papers away. All are neatly filed in their years of receiving them and all personal types of paperwork, ie: my birth certificate, p60s, family records, and so I thought, my divorce papers, are all kept very safely together.

So back in November, the month I retired, I went on my first hunt. Being as it was the first hunt I simply looked in the most obvious...

Today I claimed my pension by phone. It seems now one only has to make a phone call rather than fill in all the forms.

I do wish they would make up their mind though.

In the letter I received a few weeks ago, that everyone receives just before the Birthday that will turn us into an O.A.P., it states that one can make a claim 4 months prior to their Birthday. Well, being the lazy marebag that I am I kept forgetting to make the phone call until today when I realised that I am less than 2 months away now.

Thinking that if I leave it too late it might mean a late start for the first payment, and I know they don't back date a pension, I thought I had better make that phone call. In fact, depending on what day ones Birthday falls on, one can already lose several days. The pension starts from the first Monday after ones Birthday. So if one is...