 TITLE: How to Budget for One-Time Expenses CONTENT: How to Budget for (Non-Emergency) One-Time Expenses\n---------------------------------------------------\nOther expenses happen even less often than annually, and can feel harder to budget for. Perhaps you'd like to take a trip for your five-year wedding anniversary or pay for an elective medical device or procedure, like laser eye surgery. Or you know friends are planning big weddings in the next few years, and you'd like to be able to attend.\nIn some cases—such as with medical procedures—you can do some research to identify how much they'll cost and budget monthly for the expense using the advice above. If you'll be paying $1,000 one year from now, save about $83 a month, for example. But since one-time expenses are by nature hard to plan for, it's a wise choice to set up a dedicated account for unexpected, non-emergency expenses and send over a certain amount that you can afford each month. That also gives you a built-in budget for these nonessential costs, which can help you determine how much you can truly afford to spend on them. If budgeting monthly breaks the bank, you might even rethink whether the purchase is affordable in the first place.\nWhen it comes to where to keep your savings, you can set up individual savings accounts, or buckets within a single account, for different types of one-time expenses: a vacation fund, friends' wedding fund, health care costs fund and so one. This is easy to do at many online banks that offer high-yield savings accounts.\nHere's what setting up these accounts might look like. Say that in the next year, you foresee going on three major trips, and that in the past, those cost about $1,000 each. You'll aim to save $3,000 in total, or $250 a month, in a vacation fund. So you'll open up a vacation-specific savings account at a bank and transfer $250 there every month, ideally knowing that your money will accrue interest while it waits for you to withdraw it for vacation. END