simply having savings<\/a>, owning their home, or a partner\u2019s income rules them out. It doesn\u2019t. Others have simply never heard of pension credit at all.\u201d<\/p>\nResearch by the DWP found that confusion about eligibility was widespread.<\/p>\n
Some people believed receiving attendance allowance automatically disqualified them, whilst others assumed the benefit was reserved for those who were seriously ill or in extreme hardship.<\/p>\n
Among those entitled but not claiming, knowledge was sometimes virtually non-existent and even successful claimants often admitted they applied with little confidence, deciding simply to \u201cgive it a try\u201d.<\/p>\n
Bell added that it was easy to apply. \u201cYou can do it over the phone, claim online in around 16 minutes or by post. Many of the people in our research said they decided to just give it a try without fully knowing if they\u2019d qualify. They did.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re reading this and you have an older relative living on a low income, that\u2019s your cue. One conversation could be worth a lot: the average weekly award is \u00a387 a week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pension credit benefits <\/p>\n
Pension credit does more than increase weekly income as it unlocks help with housing costs, council tax, NHS treatment and dental care.<\/p>\n
Entitlement can also trigger winter fuel support and even a free TV licence.<\/p>\n
Awareness of these benefits was low, government research showed, yet for many claimants, especially those receiving smaller weekly top-ups, they made the greatest financial difference.<\/p>\n
Bell warned: \u201cToo many people only find out about these after they\u2019ve claimed, or after they\u2019ve lost them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a problem, because awareness of those extra benefits turns out to be one of the things that actually motivates people to apply in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n
How to claim pension credit<\/p>\n
You can start your application up to four months before you reach the\u00a0state pension age.<\/p>\n
You can apply at any time after you reach this age, but your application can only be backdated by three months.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This means you can get up to three months of pension credit in your first payment if you were eligible during that time.<\/p>\n
To apply, you can do so by post, phone or online. To find out more,\u00a0click here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Separate research from the Government shows that some pensioners could be getting an average of \u00a387 a week…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72,176,61,60,33336,1558,174,175,1611],"class_list":["post-319359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-pension-credit","tag-pensions","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-retirement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}