The ordinary retirement age is an essential element of the last part of the professional life of workers, because it represents the horizon to be reached in order to cease being an employee and become a retiree. A decision which, however, does not depend exclusively on the person.
It is common that as retirement age approaches, workers think about when they will be able to retire and how long they have left to collect their pension. For example:at what age can I retire with 16 years of contributions?
In Spain, the ordinary retirement age (the age at which it is possible to retire) depends on the contributions that the worker has accumulated during their career. This is why, among other things, lifelong contributions are so important, given that they entitle you to contributory benefits such as the retirement pension itself.
However, in our country, pension legislation is somewhat complex, and regarding the retirement age, it must be admitted that it is really There are two different retirement ages. All this is due to the 2011 pension reform which proposed to delay the retirement age.
The way it was done was as follows: gradually, from 2013 to 2027, each year, the retirement age was raised for people who had not reached a contribution threshold, which also increased. The objective is that in 2027 the age will increase to 67 years (previously it was 65 years for everyone) in case 38 years and six months of contributions are not reached.
In 2023, this level has not yet been reached, and as explained in article 4 of Law 27/2011 of August 1 (available on this link in the Official State Gazette), the retirement ages are as follows:
-Of 65 years old for people with a contribution of at least 37 years and nine months.
-Of 66 years and four months for people who do not reach 37 years and nine months of contributions.
This is why, The retirement age for people who have contributed 16 years is 66 years and four months. They will not be able to do so before, since with this contribution they will not be able to benefit from either of the two main types of early retirement: voluntary retirement requires 35 years and involuntary retirement requires 33 years.
The retirement pension you have left with 16 years of contributions
The method of calculating Social Security retirement pensions consists of adding the contribution bases for the last 25 years (i.e. 300 bases in total) and dividing this amount by 350 to find the value of the pension. regulatory basis. In this calculation, Social Security will apply coefficients to the bases for all years except the last two to reflect the effect of inflation, and workers will benefit from the integration of gaps to fill periods without contributions with fictitious bases (not applicable for self-insurance). – salaried and domestic workers).
The retirement pension will correspond to a specific percentage of this regulatory base. This percentage depends on the worker’s contribution, so that with 15 years, 50% is guaranteed, for each of the following 49 months of contributions, an additional 0.21% is granted and for each of the following 209 months, a supplement of 0.19% is granted. .
Thus, people who have contributed for a total of 16 years will benefit from a retirement pension equal to 52.52% of its regulatory base.
