Free printable · for households
Free Renewal Lead-Time Card
A calendar that tells you when something expires is already too late. A passport is a nine-month job, not a two-week one. An insurance renewal is worth nothing on the day it lands — the money is in the three months before, while you can still shop the same cover. A professional license is really a deadline for continuing education that ended months earlier. So this card carries twelve of the household deadlines that actually cost money when they slip, and beside each one the lead time: how far ahead you have to begin. It arrives filled in, not blank — there is nothing to set up and nothing to sign up for.
Take it with you — free, no signup
Direct download. No email, no account — just the files.
What it does
- Lists twelve household deadlines — passport, REAL ID, driver's license, vehicle registration, safety inspection, auto insurance, home insurance, appliance warranties, health plan open enrollment, the FSA plan year, a professional license, and annually-billed subscriptions.
- Gives each one the cycle it runs on, the lead time to start it, and the specific thing missing it costs — so the card is a reference you read, not a form you fill.
- Carries a backward-planning grid: twelve expiry months down the side, three lead times across the top, and the month to start printed in every cell. Find the row, run across, write the month down.
- Marks every start month that lands in the previous calendar year, because counting backward across a January by hand is exactly where the off-by-one comes from.
- Flags the three that catch people out — the license whose real deadline is a course, the registration that sits behind an inspection, and the renewal that is only worth shopping months early.
- Is undated on purpose. There are no years printed anywhere, so the same card works every year and there is nothing to renew.
- Printable PDF, US Letter, 3 pages. Print at 100%. Nothing to sign up for, no email, and nothing you write on it leaves your own copy.
Own it, don't rent it
Want the other 45 deadlines, and the wall chart?
This free card carries 12 of the 57 deadlines and three of the six lead times. The full pack carries all 57 across eight categories, each with why its lead time is what it is, what a miss costs in full, and where to check the real number for your own state and provider. With it comes the twelve-month wall chart itself — one undated landscape sheet where every deadline is written twice, once in the month it expires and once, earlier, in the month to start — plus the full Backward-Planning Reckoner across all six lead times, eight category lead-time cards, ten wall-safe fill-in cards pre-printed with the deadlines, a re-quote card carrying the 18 renewals worth shopping rather than letting roll, a done-this-year log, a private reference booklet for the drawer, and a worked example. 84 pages across 7 PDFs, with A4 editions of the three you print.
A one-time purchase you print as often as you like — paper that still works when the battery is dead, the signal is gone, or a subscription lapsed, and that everyone in the house can read without being invited to an account.
A calendar method, not legal, tax, insurance, immigration, or medical advice. Every lead time here is a planning allowance rather than a published standard, and every jurisdictional detail is a starting point for an ordinary US household — confirm each one with the issuer, your state, your licensing board, your insurer, your manufacturer, or a professional you are paying before you rely on it. Rules and processing times change. Free to use; please don't resell or redistribute.