Field note · 12 March 2026
Counting a five-year house plot before you name the monthly line
A cousin told a household in Tambon Taba that a nearby plot might be offered for a certain sum if they could pay within five years. They arrived at the desk with that single number written on a scrap, ready to divide it by sixty months. The division was tidy. It was also the wrong first step.
The price is not the whole goal
The seller’s figure, if it is even still available in five years, sits beside other cash the household expects to need on the day of transfer: the costs they already know they must bring in baht, a small repair reserve for the first rainy season, and a buffer so the move does not empty the rice money. We write those as separate lines. Adding them is slower than dividing one number, and it is the work.
Thin months decide the contribution
This household’s fuller months came after a good run at the morning market. The thin months came when the school term had just started and a parent’s medicine was paid. A monthly line taken from the good run would have failed in March. We took the line from March. The five-year date stayed. The amount set aside each month dropped, and the map said so in plain words.
If the date moves, the line moves. A seven-year plot is a different plan from a five-year plot, even when the land is the same piece of ground. The sheet should show the date in a place you can point to, not a mood about “someday.”
What we refuse to pretend
We do not write a land price as if it were a promise from the cousin. The map says “figure supplied by the household, March 2026.” When they return for a yearly look, that line is the first one we ask about. If the cousin’s offer has changed, the goal changes with it, openly.