There's a quiet confusion at the heart of personal finance: the way banks talk about debt and the way you experience it are two different things.
Your credit card statement shows a balance of £2,400. To the bank, that's an asset — money you owe them. To you, it's the opposite — it's a liability, a negative number in your overall picture. Same £2,400, completely different meaning depending on whose perspective you're looking from.
The sign problem
When you import transactions from a credit card, the numbers can feel backwards. A purchase shows as a positive number (the balance went up). A payment shows as negative (the balance went down). But from your perspective, the purchase was spending and the payment was a good thing — you were paying down what you owe.
This matters more than it sounds. If your finance tool shows debt from the bank's perspective, your net worth calculation is wrong. Your spending totals might be confused. And making a credit card payment — which should feel like progress — can look like it achieved nothing.
Transfers vs payments
There's another subtlety that's easy to miss: paying off a credit card is not the same as transferring money between your own accounts.
When you move £500 from current to savings, your total wealth hasn't changed. It's just money moving between pockets. That's a transfer — an internal household movement that should be netted out of your spending and income.
But when you pay £500 off your credit card, something different happens. You're reducing a liability. Your net worth actually improves by £500. And the spending that created that credit card balance already happened — it was the purchases you made with the card, not the payment that cleared them.
If your tool treats debt payments the same as transfers, the numbers stop making sense. Keep understands this distinction. Transfers between your own asset accounts are netted out. Payments toward debt are treated as what they are: reducing what you owe.
Seeing your real position
Keep shows debt from your perspective, not the bank's. A credit card balance is a negative number — money you owe. A payment reduces that balance and improves your net worth. The maths is correct from your point of view, which means the picture you see is the one that actually matters.
This extends to mortgages, loans, and any other form of debt. Your mortgage balance is a liability that decreases over time. Each payment is progress. And your net worth — the difference between everything you own and everything you owe — is calculated correctly, giving you an honest view of where you stand.
Progress you can see
One of the most motivating things about handling debt properly is that you can see progress. Every credit card payment, every mortgage payment, every loan instalment is visibly improving your position.
That might sound obvious, but it's surprisingly rare in finance tools. When debt is handled from the bank's perspective, payments can feel like they disappear into a void. When it's handled from yours, you can watch the balance shrink and your net worth grow.
Small thing, maybe. But seeing progress clearly is one of the best motivators there is.