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The bills that only show up once a year
Most monthly budgets miss the same category: bills that arrive once a year. They're not surprises — you knew they were coming. They just weren't on the page when you planned the month.
Some money goes out every month: rent, electricity, your phone bill. You feel those. They're hard to miss because they show up so often.
Other money goes out once a year, or twice a year, or every three years. You feel those much less often, so when they land they feel like surprises — even though you knew about them all along.
The usual suspects
Things that often only happen once a year:
- Insurance renewals — car, home, renter's, pet, travel.
- Vehicle registration and yearly inspection fees.
- Property taxes or annual income tax bills you owe at filing time.
- Annual memberships — gym, professional bodies, club fees, costco-style retailers.
- Domain renewals and other "I set this up years ago and forgot" online bills.
- Holidays and gifts — Christmas, birthdays, weddings you said yes to in February.
- School fees, registration costs, uniforms.
None of them feel like a subscription. All of them behave like one — they repeat on a schedule, and the cost is mostly known in advance.
Why monthly budgets miss them
A monthly budget asks "what do I spend in a typical month?" The honest answer for yearly bills is: in eleven months, zero. In one month, a lot. So they don't fit the question.
When the renewal lands, the typical reaction is to either pull from savings ("I guess this is what savings is for") or pile it onto a credit card ("I'll deal with it next month"). Neither feels great, and neither is necessary, because you knew the bill was coming.
The simple trick: divide by twelve
For any yearly bill, divide the amount by 12 to know what it really costs you per month. Then mentally treat that as a monthly cost — set the money aside, in a savings account or just in your head — so the renewal pays itself.
A worked example
Imagine four yearly bills, the kind a lot of people have:
That $120 a month is the part that was hiding. Most monthly budgets simply don't include it, which is why those four bills feel huge when they land. They're not huge — you just stored their cost in eleven invisible months instead of twelve visible ones.
Two ways to actually use this
Option A — keep it in your head. Subtract the monthly equivalent ($120 in our example) from the money you think you have to spend each month. This is the lightest version. It works as long as you're disciplined.
Option B — open a separate savings pocket. Move $120 into a separate account every month. When the bill lands, the money is sitting there waiting. This is the heavier version, but it removes any risk of accidentally spending it.
Both work. The point is the same: stop treating yearly bills as surprises.
Keeping the date visible too
Dividing by twelve handles the cost. It doesn't handle the date. If you only know that car insurance is "$720 a year" but not when it renews, you can still get caught short the month it actually lands.
So the second half of the trick: write down the actual due date next to each yearly bill. Whatever tool you use — paper, calendar, app — make sure each yearly bill has its real renewal date visible.
What this looks like in Forgettie
Forgettie keeps yearly bills next to monthly ones in the same list, but it groups them so the yearly section is a separate block with its own subtotal. Each row shows the yearly cost and its next due date — so you get both halves of the trick at the same time.
The whole article in one sentence
Yearly bills aren't surprises — they're monthly bills you forgot to slice up. Slice them, set the slice aside, keep the date visible.