Yes, the deficit. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because the money is in different sets of books, they’re separate. Let me give you a scenario. Let’s say that I have two jobs. I have my normal job, that pays me $1000 a month, and I moonlight at another job that pays me $200 a month. And just because I like to keep things orderly, I have two checking accounts, one that I use for my regular expenses; rent, food, whatever, where I put the $1000 in, and one that I just use for beer money, which I put the $200 in.
Now even I don’t drink $200 of beer a month, so at the end of each month, I take my leftover beer money out of the beer account and put it in my regular account to spend on whatever. But I make sure to write myself a note each month, saying “January, $50 from the beer account, February, $100 from the beer account, etc.”, so that I know, if there’s ever a month where I have to spend more than $200 a month on beer, I can move the money that I loaned myself back in.
Now, if I get a raise at my moonlighting job, does that just help me throw nicer parties, or does that help me generally?