Annual renewals,seen a year ahead.

Annual renewal tracker

How to keep track of annual renewals

Yearly bills are not hard to pay. They are hard to remember.

Why yearly bills catch you out

A monthly bill teaches you its rhythm. Rent leaves on the 1st, the phone plan a few days later, and after a couple of months you stop thinking about either. A yearly bill never gets that practice. Twelve months is long enough to forget the date, the amount and sometimes the provider. The renewal notice that should warn you comes from a company that would rather you renewed without thinking, and it is easy to miss among newsletters and receipts.

The other problem is size. A yearly bill packs twelve months of cost into one payment. Car insurance at €540 is €45 a month, which barely registers. As a single payment in March, it is the reason March looks expensive.

List everything that renews once a year

Start with a list, because most people underestimate how many yearly bills they have:

• Insurance: car, home or contents, travel, sometimes health.
• Vehicle: road tax, technical inspection, breakdown cover, parking permits.
• Home: boiler service, chimney sweep, property tax where it is billed yearly.
• Digital: domain names, hosting, password managers, antivirus, cloud storage, software licences.
• Memberships: a gym on a yearly plan, shopping memberships, professional associations.
• Documents: passport, ID card, driving licence. They renew every five or ten years, cost money, and are just as easy to forget.

To find the ones you have, search your email for "renewal", "policy" and "annual", and go through twelve months of bank or card statements looking for amounts that appear only once. It is common to end up with ten or more.

Put each renewal on its date, not in a note

A note or a spreadsheet tells you what renews, but not when you need to act. What helps is seeing each renewal in the month it lands, next to that month’s other bills. Then the expensive month shows up while you can still plan for it.

In Figa you add each one as a recurring bill: choose Yearly, Every 1 year, and the date of the next renewal. For a two-year inspection or a ten-year passport, choose Every 2 or Every 10 years. From then on the bill sits in its month, and the months ahead show what each one needs, renewals included.

Get reminded before the date, not on it

A reminder on the due date is only good for paying. To compare insurance quotes or cancel a membership you need time before the renewal, and many contracts renew automatically unless you cancel first.

Figa reminds you a set number of days before a bill is due, on the day itself and when it is overdue, by email and in the app. You choose the lead time in your notification settings, so pick one long enough for the bills you might want to switch.

Spread the cost over the year

Knowing the date is half the job. The other half is having the money ready. One simple habit: add up your yearly bills, divide by twelve and set that amount aside every month. €1,244 a year in renewals is about €104 a month, so when the expensive month comes, the money is already there.

Figa does not move money or manage savings. It shows what each coming month needs, so you can see in advance which months carry the renewals and how much they add.

When the price changes

Renewal is when prices change. Insurers recalculate premiums, software moves to a new plan, a registrar raises its fee. Record the new amount when it happens, so next year’s plan uses it.

In Figa, edit the bill and choose This and future occurrences. Earlier years keep the amount you paid. Attach the new policy to all occurrences, and it stays with the series.