Retirement Age – Born in 1973

Last updated on April 10th, 2023

Born in 1973 (Updated March 2023)

If you were born in 1973 then you may be wondering what your retirement age is.

By retirement age in this context we mean state pension age, i.e. the date or age at which you are first allowed to claim your state pension and get the benefits that you have earned through your previous NI payments.

There may be different rules in place for what age you are able to draw your personal pension or workplace pension benefits and you will need to contact your scheme administrator if you are not sure, or check your documentation.

For those people who were born in 1973, your retirement age is currently your 67th birthday. This is the age that was put into legislation by the Pensions Act 2007 (and subsequently confirmed by the Pensions Act 2014).

However, both independent reviews (Cridland in 2017 and Neville-Rolfe in 2023) propose that your retirement age should be 68. The government did say in 2017 that they would legislate for the change to 68 recommended in the Cridland review but they have not yet done so and are now saying no further legislation will happen until after the next independent review.

Ongoing Reviews

There are ongoing reviews of State pension ages and it is quite possible that your State Pension ag will be officially change to 68 after the next review. However, it is unlikely to go any higher than that.

The government have said that the state pension must be kept at an affordable level for it to be funded by the current working population (as the state pension is run on a pay as you go basis – i.e. those who work currently pay for those who are retired) and so the ratio of those in employment to those in retirement must be monitored in terms of the fact that they envisage a third of people’s working life to be in retirement. So if people live longer then the age at which they retire is likely to get higher to enable the pension to remain affordable.