It does work for modelling flows, but the meaning of balances gets a bit wonky. Income is revenues - expenses in the debit/credit model, but in the plus/minus m

It does work for modelling flows, but the meaning of balances gets a bit wonky. Income is revenues - expenses in the debit/credit model, but in the plus/minus model it's -revenue - expenses (hledger's income statement report flips the sign on revenue accounts, so you get the net via the normal equation). A different way to do double-entry-lite might be to retain plus/minus, but have that operate on the account's normal balance -- pay for expenses by decreasing an asset or increasing a liability. Transactions still balance even if they don't sum to zero -- it makes sense that an IOU balances out the coffee you just got. You do need to understand the four basic account types (explicit equity accounts are arguably not relevant to most individuals), but that's something that's needed anyway. You still don't need to explicitly learn about debits and credits, but if you do it's much closer from here than from the flow-based approach. Flow is easy, but I feel that in the end modeling the effect on balances is simpler.