When you request payment of your retirement before age 67, without having the number of quarters corresponding to your generation, your pensions are reduced by applying a discount. If you don’t want to play for extensions, you have the option of purchasing quarters from your basic plan to artificially increase your insurance duration. This can allow you to leave from the retirement age applicable to your generation − i.e. 62 and a half years for policyholders born in 1962 gradually increased to 64 years for those born from 1968 (but not before) − with a pension substantially equal to that which you would have had by working to the end.
Buying back quarters is also a solution to consider if you wish to return to professional activity under the same scheme as the one which pays you your pension in order to benefit from the more advantageous rules of full accumulation.
Conversely, a buyout is of no interest if you know that you will request your retirement late, because from the age of 67, your pensions are automatically calculated at full rate, that is to say without reduction, even if you do not have the number of quarters corresponding to your generation.
You still need to be able to buy back all your missing quarters (the buyback is capped at twelve quarters) and have periods to buy back, that is to say periods during which you have made little or no retirement contributions: may be terms corresponding to years of higher education or internships in a company, to years of expatriation during which you were not affiliated with the Caisse des Français de l’enseignement (CFE), or to incomplete calendar years during which your income was too low to validate four quarters.
It all depends on your diet
The older you get, the higher the cost of the operation; count between 3,000 and 6,000 euros per quarter after 60 years. However, it is preferable not to start too early, even if there are preferential rate schemes for those who buy back their years of higher education before the age of 40 and/or their internships in a company before the age of 30. It is better to start as late as possible, ideally in the year before your retirement, so as to have real visibility on your end of career. This will prevent you from buying one quarter too many and will allow you to eliminate all the hazards. But, above all, you will be able to precisely quantify the interest of a buyout.
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