Today I talked with an individual who was selling himself as a personal financial planner and as a part of his spiel he regularly referenced the national debt and what it would probably mean for future tax rates. Unfortunately, everytime he referenced the national debt he actually said national deficit. Maybe I’m expecting too much but I feel like you should know the difference between the debt and deficit and use the terms correctly if you are a financial planner and encouraging people to make certain investments based on the future tax rates possiblle due to our increasing debt.
National Deficit – how much we spend each year as a nation over our income (taxes, tariffs, etc). The opposite is a surplus, where we have more income than we spend.
National Debt – the total we have borrowed over all the year’s deficits (less the year’s with surpluses).
Projected 2018 National Deficit – Around 800 billion
Current National Debt – Around 21 trillion.