I lost mine when a TLD (.xyz) thought I was malicious. I've also just failed to renew a domain before. So you're relying on the registry operator for the TLD itself to not ban you, the registrar to successfully renew, and yourself and your bank to successfully lay the registrar.

In fact the entire reason I stay on free email from a company I don't like is because I think it minimizes the chance I lose access to my email. My conclusion is essentially the exact opposite of the article.