I think you’ve misunderstood some python syntax, the following does two assignments:
In [11]: a = b = 1
In [12]: a
Out[12]: 1
In [13]: b
Out[13]: 1
So in your code it was as if you were doing:
sum = df['budget'] + df['actual'] # a Series
# and
df['variance'] = df['budget'] + df['actual'] # assigned to a column
The latter creates a new column for df:
In [21]: df
Out[21]:
cluster date budget actual
0 a 2014-01-01 00:00:00 11000 10000
1 a 2014-02-01 00:00:00 1200 1000
2 a 2014-03-01 00:00:00 200 100
3 b 2014-04-01 00:00:00 200 300
4 b 2014-05-01 00:00:00 400 450
5 c 2014-06-01 00:00:00 700 1000
6 c 2014-07-01 00:00:00 1200 1000
7 c 2014-08-01 00:00:00 200 100
8 c 2014-09-01 00:00:00 200 300
In [22]: df['variance'] = df['budget'] + df['actual']
In [23]: df
Out[23]:
cluster date budget actual variance
0 a 2014-01-01 00:00:00 11000 10000 21000
1 a 2014-02-01 00:00:00 1200 1000 2200
2 a 2014-03-01 00:00:00 200 100 300
3 b 2014-04-01 00:00:00 200 300 500
4 b 2014-05-01 00:00:00 400 450 850
5 c 2014-06-01 00:00:00 700 1000 1700
6 c 2014-07-01 00:00:00 1200 1000 2200
7 c 2014-08-01 00:00:00 200 100 300
8 c 2014-09-01 00:00:00 200 300 500
As an aside, you shouldn’t use sum as a variable name as the overrides the built-in sum function.