Budget & phased purchasing plan
Every purchase in order, with what it depends on, so nothing is bought before the decision it rests on is settled.
The plan
"Depends on" names the decision or sample that must be confirmed before this is bought; "status of that dependency" is copied from the schedule or sample tracker: confirmed means buy when the phase arrives, provisional means not yet, unresolved means the sample or observation that closes it comes first. Estimates are your own, in your own currency.
Phase summary
Read-only, built from the rows above and updated as you type. A phase flagged "has unresolved dependencies" contains a purchase that waits for a question still open; the observation that closes it belongs in an earlier phase.
Budget notes
How to use this sheet
- Rows come from the keep / change / later list. Every "change" row there with a phase becomes a row here with an estimate and a source. Keep the dependency text the same so the two sheets can be read together.
- Phase 1 is the first move. Often that is bulbs and the anchor, then the large movable surface if it depends on nothing unconfirmed; if your first move is something else, write why. If phase 1 has grown long, check each row: is it a single test, the piece you are building from, or something that could wait?
- Sort within a phase by dependency, not eagerness. The row whose dependency is confirmed goes first; a row whose dependency is provisional waits, and the sample that would confirm it is itself a row (sample pots cost money and belong in the plan).
- Prefer sources that let you see the thing in the room first. Secondhand with a return, on approval, borrowed, or already owned. "New" without a way to see it in the room is the one source that does not fit the method; use a sample, a single item of the set, or a returnable version.
- Fill in "actual" when you buy. The difference between estimate and actual is part of the post-implementation review in Module 11 and reshapes the later phases.
- Write a buying rule in the notes and keep it. A useful one: nothing is bought whose dependency is unresolved. A sale ending Saturday is a reason to buy the confirmed rows now; it is not a reason to promote a provisional one.
- Keep a contingency. A line for the sample pots you did not plan, the second rug when the first fails the five o'clock test, the bulbs that turned out to be the wrong base.
The example rows are Larkin Street's one-year plan: Dana and Priya's first home, honey oak floors, beige tile, the olive sofa they are keeping, a budget under $1,000 for the year, and permission to paint. Their first move is bulbs plus a rug; in the order they chose, paint comes in month four after the rug is on the floor and the samples have been seen in daylight and in the evenings beside it; textiles come later, against the painted wall; the kitchen waits until last. The estimates are their rough guesses for their own plan, not prices the course asserts, and the total is under their budget on purpose, with room left for sample pots.
Every number on this sheet is yours. The course names no prices as facts and does not know what anything costs where you live; the estimates, the subtotals and the flags are arithmetic on what you typed. A phase with no flag is not a phase that will go well; it is a phase whose dependencies you have marked confirmed, and those marks are only as good as the samples and observations behind them. The sheet never tells you to buy anything before you have observed and tested it.