# Recurring expenses: half your month can be logged once

> In a typical home, rent, utilities, subscriptions and instalments decide half of monthly spending. How to set them up once, and what to review quarterly.

_Habits · Published 2026-09-02, updated 2026-10-14_

In a typical household, between rent, service charges, utilities, subscriptions,
insurance and instalments, **half of monthly spending is already decided before
the month starts.** That isn't an optimistic estimate: add it up and see.

Which has a very concrete practical consequence: half your expense tracking can be
set up once and then run itself.

## Why it matters more than it looks

**It eliminates half the monthly work.** Without recurring entries, every month you
retype rent, power, gas, internet, three subscriptions and two instalments. Ten or
twelve identical entries that add no new information. It's exactly the kind of
repetitive work that makes people quit.

**It's what keeps your month complete even when you log nothing.** A month with
only the variable expenses in it shows half your spending and looks like a cheap
month.

**It lets you see next month before it arrives.** With recurring expenses entered
forward, the question "can I afford this?" has an answer on the 1st rather than on
the 25th.

## What goes in as recurring and what doesn't

**Yes:**

- Rent, service charges, utilities
- Subscriptions of every kind
- Insurance and health plan premiums
- Purchase instalments, for as many months as they last. It's in
  [interest-free instalments](/en/blog/instalment-plans-and-your-budget)
- The monthly fee for your tax regime, if you're self-employed
- The spread-out portion of annual costs — insurance, registration, tuition — as a
  monthly line of directed saving

**No:**

- Groceries. They happen weekly but the amount changes, and logging them as fixed
  at an average hides exactly what you wanted to see.
- Fuel, for the same reason.
- Anything whose amount varies by more than 20% month to month.

The test: **if the amount is the same or nearly, it's recurring. If it changes,
it's variable and gets logged when it happens.**

## Utilities that vary: the middle case

Power and gas are monthly but move with the season. Two ways to handle them:

1. **Log them as recurring at the annual average** and correct when the real one
   arrives. Advantage: next month is always complete. Downside: you have to
   correct.
2. **Log them when they arrive.** Advantage: always exact. Downside: your
   projection for next month falls short.

The first is better if you use the projection to decide. The second, if you only
look backwards.

## Review them every three months, not every year

This is the maintenance almost nobody does, and where the money is:

- **Amounts change.** Rent goes up, the subscription raises its price, insurance
  adjusts. A recurring entry at the old amount makes your budget lie downwards,
  month after month, without anything breaking.
- **Subscriptions accumulate.** It's the category where what you pay for and don't
  use shows up — the most profitable finding of any review, because it's cancelled
  once and saved permanently. It's in
  [small expenses that add up](/en/blog/small-expenses-that-add-up).
- **Instalments end.** If a twelfth instalment is still showing up in month
  fourteen, there's a recurring entry that never got cancelled.

The [monthly close](/en/blog/monthly-money-review) is a good place to do it, once
a quarter.

## In one line

Set up once everything that repeats at the same amount, leave what changes as
variable, spread annual costs into a monthly line, and review the list every three
months — which is where what you pay for and don't use turns up.

## Download

- iPhone (App Store): https://apps.apple.com/app/id6758053806
- Android (Google Play): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kesef.app

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