Money has a sign because it can flow in one of two ways. Generally we use +
for money coming at us (a loan from the bank, interested received on a
saving account, etc) and a negative sign (-) for money leaving us (payment
made on a loan, taxes paid (you do pay taxes, I hope), deposits to a savings
account, etc)
best wishes

On Jun 8, 8:47 am, Thomas Hastings <Thomas
Hasti...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

Inflows and outflows must have opposite signs.  But whether you use
plus for in and minus for out, or vice versa, is a matter of taste and
sometimes context.

Most people use plus for inflows and minus for outflows.  Hopefully
that does not seem "highly counter-intuitive" to you.  But note that
in that case, lenders and borrowers, for example, would choose
different signs.

I usually assign plus and minus so that the Excel function returns a
non-negative value.  (Except when my spreadsheet design reflects
positive and negative values.)  So I would write the functions the
same way whether I am a lender or borrower.  But I still must be
consistent with respect to the sign of inflows and outflows.

It is really more of an algebraic reason, and now a computer
programming reason.  I have never heard a financial person speak of a
loan as -$100,000 ;->.

(A bookkeeper might.  But again, whether it is a negative or positive
value depends on the type of the account.)

Think of it this way:  you are "paying" (investing) the present value
and "receiving" (growing to) the future value.  Thus, PV can be
thought of as an outflow, and FV can be thought of as an inflow.