> You can set it up so you renew up to 10 full years (from the remaining 9) every year. That way you have 9 chances to fail before it becomes an issue.

That's also a good idea because it gives you plenty of time to switch domains if you have to.

Consider the recent almost-sale of .org which had a lot of people worried about large price increases. If you want to move to a cheaper TLD after such a thing it could take a lot longer than a year. Remember, it's not just web stuff you need to address. There's also email. My primary email has been at my personal domain for over 20 years--getting everyone who has it updated with a new address at a different TLD would not be quick.

By keeping it 10 years out, I've got at least 9 years to deal with moving everything if I have to switch.

I use namecheap and just use their auto renew feature. Do other registrars not have that option?

Auto renewal doesn't help here.

Credit cards expire, e-mails get deactivated, addresses change.

If you're not getting notices about your domain expiring in the first place, auto-renew isn't going to stay working after your credit card expires, which is only a couple years.

I use Namecheap, and I have deliberately avoided their auto-renewal service because it doesn't offer me anything.

The key point is that a human needs to be involved in an audit process which occurs regularly. And so I renew all my domains once per year in December, a year in advance.

Now that I think about it, I suppose I could extend one year at a time, but keep a 1-2 year buffer (or larger) in case of dire emergency instead of a 0-1 year buffer.

> I use namecheap and just use their auto renew feature. Do other registrars not have that option?

That still runs into the 10 year problem. Whatever payment information an organization sets up will probably be invalid in 10 years.

This is good solution.