I usually add money to like a loan. After bringing myself back into the black, I build stuff with it, and deduct the exact same amount again. So I'm sort of mortagaging my present for the future. Debts get bigger though. As a result on my spending on mining centres for the Hayasdan, I was 160k in debt and have been crawling slowly back up to 120k in debt. I was stuck at 130k for a long while because I needed to keep taking small loans to build or replenish troops.

But yeah. I don't know if that's a cheat, but I DO know I would've been ground under by the AS 10 years ago if I hadn't added the money to build me an army worthy of my name.