Subtraction when second number is bigger than first number

I'm a bit new to this. I'm trying to figure out how subtraction works pen and paper wise.

I have a bit of a program where I can't seem to find any answers online. What I want to do is use the borrowing method of subtraction. I have a:

1) I'm trying subtract:

   6526
-  8437

All websites I test and calculator says the answer is 1911 but I'm getting -2089. I'm using the borrowing method, but shouldn't the number be negative?

Thanks so much.

Here is why you got the wrong answer. Part way through the calculation you will have $$\eqalign{6526&\cr -\ 8437&\cr -\!\!\!-\!\!\!-\!\!\!-\!\!\!-\!\!\!-&\cr ?089&\cr}$$ The next subtraction will give you $-2$ in place of the question mark. But note that the "places" in your answer are all positive. That is, the $9$ represents $9\times1$, the $8$ represents $8\times10$ and the $0$ represents $0\times100$. So the $089$ represents $89$.

In the same way, your $-2$ will represent $-2000$. So the final answer will be $$-2000+89=-1911\ ,$$ which is correct.

However you cannot write this number as $-2089$, because that would mean that not only the $2$ but all the other digits count as negative. In other words, $-2089$ is the number $-2000-89$, not $-2000+89$.

$6526-8437=-1911$. You can type it into google to check.

What I do when I have to solve this sort of problem is swap the order of the numbers so the big number is on top.

So I calculate $8437-6526=1911$. Then I multiply it by minus one to get $6526-8437$, which is what I wanted.

This works because $-(a-b)=b-a$.