National Insurance contributions, or lack thereof
Doing a bit of checking the other day on Gov.UK with regard to the State Pension and it appears that, despite being in my 41st year of NI contributions through my RAF pay, I will still not qualify for the full State Pension when the appropriate time comes. I, and many others it would seem, was "contracted out" of making full NI contributions by my employer at some point. I can't tell when this happened and the staff in PSF can't tell me either. If I'm being slow on the uptake on this matter and should know better, I'll take the hit however, plenty of people I work with are similarly in the dark.
Any wise owls out there who know what the score is on this one?
My strong advice on this would be to check your status via the Government pensions website. It takes a few minutes to set things up, but you may find the results interesting / worrying.