Comment by globular-toast

I find it more intuitive to use negatives. Then it's just equity + income + liabilities + assets + expenses = 0. In fact, every transaction and therefore the entire ledger sums to zero at all times.

So if you take out a loan to buy lemonade: +$5 to expenses, -$5 to liabilities. If you sell lemonade: -$5 to income, +$5 to assets. You just have to remember that equity, income and liabilities will be negative so flip them if you want to answer questions like "how much do I owe?"