Bills that only come once a year in NZ, and how not to get caught out

Your car

• Vehicle registration (licensing), which you can pay for different lengths of time
• Warrant of Fitness. How often depends on your vehicle's age; check the NZTA website for yours
• Servicing, tyres and repairs

Your home

• House and contents insurance paid yearly
• Council rates, which most councils bill in instalments through the year
• Dog registration, once a year

Memberships and renewals

• Yearly subscriptions such as software, cloud storage, antivirus, streaming and shopping memberships
• Domain names and website hosting
• Professional memberships, practising certificates and union fees
• ACC levies if you're self-employed

Family and life

• School donations, activity fees and camps
• Birthdays and Christmas
• Dentist, optometrist and vet check-ups
• Passport and driver licence renewals, which come round about every ten years

1. Go through the last twelve months of bank and credit card statements. Look for payments that appeared only once or twice.
2. Search your email for "renewal", "invoice", "registration" and "your policy".
3. Check when your car's registration and WOF expire. You can look both up on the NZTA website.
4. Ask the rest of your household what they pay for. Shared costs are easy to miss.
5. Write each one down with its cost and the month it's due.

Add up everything on your list and spread it across the year. For example:

• Car insurance: $900
• Contents insurance: $480
• Car registration and WOF: $250
• Car service and tyres: $450
• Yearly subscriptions and memberships: $260

That's $2,340 a year. Divided by 26, it's $90 a fortnight. Divided by 12, it's $195 a month. These figures are just an example; use your own.

Put that amount into a separate savings account every pay, with a nickname like "Yearly bills". When a bill arrives, pay it from there. Nothing comes out of your everyday money, so nothing catches you out.

Starting late? If a big bill is due soon, you won't have built up enough yet. Set aside a bit more until you've caught up, or ask the company whether you can pay in instalments this time.

• Set up an automatic payment from your everyday account to the yearly-bills account for the day after payday.
• Keep the yearly-bills account separate from your emergency fund, so you can see what each is for.
• Once a year, check your list against last year's actual bills and update the amount. Prices go up.

Many insurers and subscription services let you pay monthly instead of yearly. Monthly is easier on cash flow, but some companies charge more for it. If you have the set-aside money ready, paying yearly can work out cheaper. Ask your insurer or check the price both ways before you renew.

Korin spots the regular payments in your bank history and shows them on the Calendar and in Coming up, with a note when a regular payment goes up in price. You can set a watch, for example "Tell me when my insurer charges me", so Korin tells you as soon as the payment comes out.

Korin can only spot a yearly bill once it has seen it in your transactions, so keep your own list too. See How do watches work?.