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It seems like the target audience of this is people not already familiar with accounting.

I don't understand how describing debit/credit (accounting jargon) in layman's terms smacks of jargon, but maybe that is because I am a layman =)

As someone with no accounting background, credit/debt described as "money go in, money go out" seems like a good enough explanation in the context of this post.

Do the "true" definitions of credit/debit differ from that in a meaningful way here?



I just Googled it, and picked the first two results:

> A debit decreases assets or increases liabilities, while a credit increases assets or decreases liabilities. [1]

> A debit is always used to increase the balance of an asset account, and the cash account is an asset account. [2]

[1] https://xendoo.com/blog/debits-and-credits/ [2] https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/small-business/accounting/ar...

It's not just that they're a bit confusing, it's that those words serve exactly one purpose, which is to disambiguate the exact thing that people find confusing about them.

The biggest indicator of their failure is that they are always explained in terms of something clearer, and the reverse it not true. No-one says: "I don't understand what 'we received $50' means, can you explain that in terms of credits and debits?"


The first definition is exactly backwards - ignore it!




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