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Enzo does have a finite stipend, plus whatever he earns mucking out the Milliways stables, and is trying to show responsibility by running his own independent tab these days. However, he is never likely to worry overly about money in times of genuine need, because HIS SISTER OWNS THE FREAKING SYSTEM. Thank you.

I didn't realize Enzo worked in the stables. He does a lot of things around the Bar.

Not all the time, I think. Mostly when he needs a little extra cash. Mucking out is a good job for him, since he can't smell it. ;-)

That makes sense. I have William working there because he spends his life around horses so the stables aren't that terribly different.

*nodnod* They should probably thread.

Scorpius has never worried about money, having or needing. His family certainly lost a lot after the wars, but he's a Black and a Malfoy (and a Greengrass), and he's got enough.

He can be a bit frivolous with money at times, but I like to think that his family instilled enough sense in him to not be crazy about spending. He also doesn't exactly have a key to the vaults yet, so that helps.

That makes sense and it comes through in how you play him.

That he doesn't worry a lot, but he also likes taking care of what he has.

Edited 2011-11-11 15:03 (UTC)

Felix doesn't much worry about money. He's from an RPG, and a fairly standard one in terms of commerce: you can buy and sell weapons, armor, and consumable battle and healing items, but not much else. And apparently beating up random monsters is a fairly lucrative thing; by the end of a typical (non-New Game +) playthrough, my party generally has about half a million "coins". I imagine if he were to actually settle down and try to have a household, he might start having to worry about money, but as it stands he's pretty secure.

Kain is in the same boat, plus he's a high-ranking soldier and so presumably has both free room and board and some kind of decent salary.

Fluttershy doesn't seem to worry about money, either. The only things we actually see being paid for (as far as I can recall at the moment) are apples and apple products. I have no idea how Fluttershy makes her money, on account of most of the animals she deals with aren't "owned" as such by anypony, but she apparently has or earns enough that she can comfortably visit Ponyville's spa on a weekly basis.

I wonder if there's a barter system of some sort in Equestria. It would allow all the ponies to succeed without worrying too much about making money.

So Fluttershy might trade helping out animals that are connected to other ponies or the eggs her chicken lays for services.

Janet actually says, 'I can see my penthouse from here!' once. So yeah. She's dong fine for regular expenses.

Tyler Darrow is a successful author and thanks to the Bar his books are being sold on more than one Earth. Other world sales cover his bar tab and the odd gift mainly.

Ako mooches off the bound/kids funds and tends bar to pay for extra lessons and other things she wants. Back at Mahora she has an allowance of some sort (probably) but no regular job. Of course the school covers basic room, board and local transit passes.

Robo owns a company that can build a small rocket program if he pushes it and regularly punches through dimensional walls. A lot of his money is tied up in infrastructure and personnel and the rest of it is in long term investments. It isn't like he's going to die of old age.

Ako's coaching isn't a job for her? I always end up a little confused by her.

I know she's a student but she also is clearly someone who works as well.

She's the assistant coach so it's more of a volunteer position. Regular, plenty of work, and a line on the resume instead of money.

Ah, that makes sense.

Gordon's in a situation where money isn't a particularly big part of people's lives. Most stuff that Resistance people have is either stolen directly from the Combine or paid for by barter. Buying things at Milliways is where money comes into the picture, and usually for him that means teaching things like driving at the Bar in order to make money to pay off his tab.

Adrian, on the other hand, grew up in a lower-middle-class family in a low-income region of West Virginia. Even though his mother raised bees and his father had a reasonably successful satellite tv business, because in some areas that was people's only option for reliable news and outside info, money was always something of a concern. Five kids in the family will do that to you. He's gone out of his way to avoid going into debt at Milliways, but since he's in the same money-is-not-a-thing economic situation back home as Gordon, he's been paying his tab in barter wherever possible. He's traded a lot of tanned animal hides and furs in since first coming to the Bar, since he's a lifelong hunter and trapper and long ago learned to make the most of all the parts, not just the meat. The fact that he managed to make Karkat Vantas smile and therefore won the 'free drinks for life' thing a while ago hasn't really altered matters any. He just has Bar put his barter towards his room tab exclusively.

There was no money in Vault 101, but people had a flourishing trade in ration coupons, so Ellen was not completely unfamiliar with the concept when she surfaced. She got very familiar with economics very quickly after that, beginning with the idea of exchange rates based on how long you would have to work at extra jobs in the Vault to acquire the luxury ration coupons necessary to trade for stuff. When she realized just how easy it was to acquire water at Milliways vs. home, and how expensive other things were at the Bar versus at home, she immediately started selling stuff that she could come by easily in her world for 'twice their weight in water' or similar prices. Hard to flood the market for water, after all- it's a commodity that goes away pretty quickly once it's used the first time. With the advent of Project Purity water prices are dropping, but the dangers of moving water around the Wasteland mean there's still a fair market, and... well, between that and the things she's had to learn about the Brahmin she got from Talon Company, she's turned out to be really good at making money and using it.

Arcade Gannon is an idealist who harbors a certain resentment towards the rich of New Vegas for throwing their money away at casinos run by terrible people. He's also got a hobby of reading about failed socioeconomic systems for fun. No, really, that's canon. As far as everyday monetary stuff goes, he's equally used to barter and cash economies, because most of the people the Followers of the Apocalypse work with don't have much money to speak of whether it's caps or NCR paper money.

Varric Tethras is the younger son of a formerly noble caste family that was exiled to the surface for fixing Provings, which is to say dwarven gladiatorial combat matches. They've gone into trade in the city of Kirkwall, and Varric is described in canon as something of a merchant prince. The entire first third of his canon is taken up with him working with Hawke to acquire an investment share in an expedition into the old subterranean dwarven empire in the hopes of finding ancient riches. His background banter during the rest of the game involves a lot of dealing with different trade organizations and bribing or blackmailing criminal organizations around town. Money's important to him, but it's mostly in the sense of 'I have it, and the family has it. How do we use it to a, improve our standing, b, enjoy ourselves, and c, make more of it?'.

I don't even begin to understand the economics of the Mass Effect universe. Mordin's probably studied economics somewhere along the way given his interests, but I think for him money is the fuel used to make medical research happen and that's about it.

I love how different and complex all of these situations are and the various options for dealing with changes in life as we know it.

Gene no longer really worries about money. He's a DCI, he's hardly on the breadline. However, he grew up about as poor as you could get, through the Depression in the 30s, WWII and rationing in the 40s, and austerity through to the end of the 50s. From the age of 17 1/2 (National Service) through to now, he's always had a job, so he's always been OK. But he's fully aware of what it feels like to be poor, and has no plans to go back there. As he says in canon, 'always keep a sticky penny in the pocket for a rainy day' - he's a saver more than a spender.

That said, his needs are few and he's not tight about indulging them. House, car, booze, fags, betting and cash to pay his snouts. Oh, and alimony. By the time the 80s roll around, he's acquired some decent (for the time) suits, but he's hardly a clothes horse. He only recently started going abroad on holiday, and he doesn't do much but work. So yeah, he's got enough money to be comfortable, and he'll never be one to get into debt. Except his various bar tabs. They don't count.

ETA: Plus, he doesn't have kids. He's never had that expense. So he was better off than all his mates around him coming up through the force, too. It didn't stop him taking backhanders to get by though, just like they did. That's always been a fairly lucrative sideline - up until '73, anyway.

Harry - rich by inheritance.

Ramon - richer than rich.

Bruce - motherfuckin' billionare.

...do I have a type? Wow. Maybe I'm living my rich dreams through my pups, idk. Heh.

Edited 2011-11-11 16:10 (UTC)

Nothing wrong with a type, mine seem to be worriers or not at all.

Ace comes from a place where she'd worry about money (though she rapidly stopped when travelling with the Doctor, because he was the only one who had proper coinage anyway), but she doesn't bother now. Compound interest and time travel are your friends.

Katya was still working for a paycheck while in the Nightwatch - they might not be human, but humans make all the food and drink and tobacco and black market movies, and they all still want to be paid.

Balthazar didn't grow up wanting for money, but he knew about it - landholders had to make sure their tenants didn't starve, and had to make sure what profits were made were re-invested wisely into roads and new barns and good stock and such.

Bones ... Star-Trek verse needs to get its head on straight about money - first it's 'zomg we're a perfect moneyless society and we are doing what we love to do because we love to do it and blah blah blah' and then it's 'zomg travelling actors need to get to the next job so they get paid and don't starve and look Jim I bought you a present'. IDEK. I'm gonna say Bones pulls down a paycheck. Maybe he doesn't need to spend it on basics, but still. Paycheck. *glowers at canon*

Aaaaand I gotta go get ready for work. Boo. Maybe the threatening rain will scare away the crazy people?

I hope the rain does, the snow and cold that says, why yes, it's time for Michigan winter has made things quieter here.

Heh, oh Star Trek, it kept changing it's mind on how the utopia worked.

Shinigami doesn't really need money for anything he wants.

Mia is supported by Vane in return for her services as Guildmaster and one of the Five Heroes. Combined with Draco's money, she wants for nothing.

Lucas was unfamiliar with the concept of money until three years ago in his timeline when Fassad introduced it. Before that, everyone either bartered or gave to each other. The bank system in the game is run by frogs. F'real.

Lucas' canon seems to go out of it's way to show, why yes, this is a video game world. We do things our way.

Considering that Alec tells you at the beginning to "imagine something called a B button" as part of the dash tutorial, I heartily agree with that. The frogs, who served as save points before money was introduced, even ask Lucas point-blank if he'd like to save his game and one of the Pigmasks asks for the name of the person holding the controller. But the Mother series has always had a soft fourth wall, with Mother 2/Earthbound standing out in particular.

There's also more at the end of the game to explain why Tazmily is the way it is and, with me being roughly 3/4ths done with putting Lucas through canon in Milliways, it will be made clear soon.

Kirk is from that mystery of mysteries, the Star Trek economy. He doesn't care one whit for money.

Gibbs, being a pirate, wants more of it. Though his definition of money is basically "shiny." Paper money representing the wealth of the government makes no sense to him.

Knox grew up lower middle class, and should be the sort of striver who wants more. But somewhere along the line, he got a lot less interested in wealth. The fact that he still has all that money Rachel Summers gave him back in '06 or so, money he can't use at home, makes him see wealth as something that's there to fall back on, but not to use.

Cy lives in the strange Teen Titans cartoon, where money is no object for five hungry unemployed teens with expensive toys. I plan, however, to address how he pays for college without resorting to a student loan.

Charlie was never big on possessions even before going Zen. He would worry about money insofar as he needed some to eat and maintain his van, and that's it. He doesn't miss it.

And Howard Stark...he's rich. And wants to be richer. But he leaves all his worries to his accountants.

You've got a wonderful combination of pups and canons and I think superhero economics should be classes with Trek. They don't always make sense.

Mike, Raph, and Splinter come from a place of relative poverty. The boys were raised on found food, and re-purposed goods from various places. Heck, even their weapons were scavenged from the ransacked apartment left behind by Splinter's late Master Yoshi.

As such they all know the value of a dollar.

Splinter has simple needs, but appreciates a luxury when he could find one. These days that takes the form of the various fancy shampoos and foods that Mike and Mel have stockpiled in their apartment.

Raph, who lived in Tortall for nearly a decade, knows the power of a haggle. And while he's got himself a sizable chunk of change thanks to never really spending his Milliways income, he'd much rather barter for things. Dinner for a day's work? That's fair. Odd jobs for mending of his boots and clothes? Sure!

To Mike, money is a means to an end. And seeing as he's a hedonist, that end is pleasure. Which is why he doesn't bat an eye at price tags. If he wants it and has enough for it, it's his. Will the item in question bring a smile to the face of another? He'll take it. It's not like he doesn't know what it's like to be poor.

Aang is a monk who prides himself on his ability to haggle.
It's a good thing he doesn't have to rely on haggling to survive, or he wouldn't last very long.

Mike is so sweet and I love how Splinter and Aang are two sides of the vaguely same coin.

Tess is a billionaire. Sure, she stole it all in a fit of revenge, but it's hers legally now! However, she grew up dirt poor - literally - so she still is somewhat conscious of money when it comes to herself. Spending a few million on the latest LuthorCorp project? Doesn't faze her. Spending a few hundred on a new pair of shoes? She'll think twice about.

Clark pretty much lives in constant debt and his family almost lost the farm (oh god, that's not even a metaphor) many times, so he's overly conscious when it comes to money. The only thing the Kents seem to splurge on is trucks, which are possibly considered a work expense.

Maxima is the queen of a planet. I'm not even sure she a concept of what money is.

Oh the poor Kents, that farm has seen so much.

It's been destroyed by a meteor. It doesn't get better than that. :D

When Karkat was on his planet, he was at the bottom of the "middle class" in the hemospectrum, at least nominally/in the records, which means he got a liveable but not lavish monthly credit stipend in addition to whatever he and his lusus could scrounge up. He spent most of it on movies and, I suspect, computers, since he tends to damage his a lot.

Now that he has finished the game, he is essentially too rich to ever go broke, which is about as specific as I figure I need to be. At the high levels of the game, sums of cash that were mind-blowing at lower levels become just plain ubiquitous, and after you have bought all the best fraymotifs you just don't really need it any more.

The other in-game currency, grist, is what it is used to manufacture... well, basically anything, so I imagine it's perfectly good fuel for the bar, and the trolls had enough of that to make an entire universe, plus. Which they used to make a universe, but even the leftovers must be unimaginably huge.

But Karkat in the bar still lives the way he did on Alternia, mostly out of habit; he doesn't have the taste for gaudy jewelry or highly-processed luxury foods or all the other junk highbloods spend their wealth-stipend on. He is permanently subsidizing Shephard's drinking, because he lost a bet.

I love Karkat and Shephard's friendship, they really work.

As KD7SOV said up above about RPG economies beating up random monsters is a very lucrative business. Given that Amascut has basically positioned herself as patron goddess of beating up random monsters, and one of her human alter egos is a beating up random monsters instructor, she is fairly wealthy. I don't know if synthesizing money is in her skillset, but most likely she doesn't need it. Money isn't a thing to her. Well, except when it comes to endeavors such as getting drunk on Atlantean wine.

Compounding that is the fact that gold is a fairly inexhaustible and cheap resource to mine. And the economy is officially gold based. Evil Chicken has taken advantage of this a few times in bar. I think he is more aware of money. He isn't in the killing random monsters business; he's in the killing random people who are too busy to notice a chicken is attacking them business. And those type of people don't tend to carry much wealth with them.

That seems like a very apt thing for Amascut to be patron of since she's good at violence.

You know, that makes them almost fiat currencies except for the bit where monsters drop coins. The only universe where monsters dropping money makes sense is Kingdom of Loathing and that's because you spend meat to buy things.

Meat as currency! Ha, awesome!

Well mostly meat. Hobos require nickles, hippies take dimes, frat boys need quarters and there's a vending machine that uses 'fat loot tokens'. But these sorts of things happen when you have a game running with stick figures for graphics.

One thing in KoL that I always thought was a nice touch: You get more meat from monsters as you gain levels, but that's because those monsters are just bigger than the ones you were fighting before. Things like giants and yetis.

I have a lot of people who used to worry about money, but don't anymore. Carl's careful with his money, so he's getting a decent stockpile going. Cosmo... well, he keeps books for organised crime. I doubt he's hurting for anything these days. XD

Moist used to, especially before he joined the Henchmen's Union (comes of being too sweaty to hold a job), but Doc's doing well financially so he is too. Conflict Diamond's family didn't have much in Liberia or LA, but she fixed that with her first big heist, on the grounds that if anyone's going to profit from the blood diamond trade, it should be people who lost something to it.

Now that the Guild is re-established, Cata and Sam are doing quite well for themselves once again. Contracts tend to pay well.

Claudia had a trust fund from her parents; after she busted Joshua out of limbo, she gave him most of what was left to finance his move to Switzerland. There's not much she wants to spend money on outside of shiny tech stuff (I think she does actually rock the thrift stores a lot, just so she has the spare money for said tech stuff). I think she's coming down to the end of her Vegas haul from canon, if the timeline distortion we've been through in getting through episodes hasn't already done it in, but I have to figure being a Warehouse agent pays well as government work goes.

Apollo... is a god. XD

Claudia is gifted at rocking the thrift stores and as she probably knows some amazing things to do to tech, that might help her get better prices too.

Spike doesn't care about money because he has no qualms about stealing it.

Although once the chip in his head stopped him killing humans for dinner and, when he remembered to bother, ransacking their pockets, acquiring money did start to take actual effort and taught him a new appreciation for what humans are always on about.

These days he mostly tries to take it from scumbags (without killing them, usually) to placate the voice of internalized Buffy; fortunately LA is full of scumbags with money.

Oh, poor Spike with his internalized Buffy and the chip making him behave.

Great DE question.

Alex is solidly upper middle class, and doesn't really think about money. Her parents died when she was twelve, and left her with a tidy estate in trust, enough to go to top schools through her advanced degree. She makes a good living in her own right, and the only time she ever had to worry about money was when her ex-husband decided that work was boring, and anyway, he had a novel to write. Money was among the many things they fought about, as Alex's belief in equal earning meant little to him, and his daughter was going to be brilliant and thus, could rely on scholarships, right? Alex gets no alimony or child support from him, on principle. Her books also earn her a fair penny, not enough to live on by themselves, certainly, but enough. She's never wanted for anything.

Olga doesn't think about money. She's perhaps a bit morally ambiguous about acquiring it when needs must, but other than that, it's a petty human concern.

Fiona grew up lower middle class, and loves pretty shiny things. Money is something you acquire as you go, by theft or con, or shady business dealings. It never lasts, so she always seems to be working an angle. That said, she owns a nice condo in a good neighborhood Miami, so she's not hurting.

Mills is quite well-off, but you would never know it to look at him. He lives a spartan life, spending only the bare minimum to fulfil his basic needs. He grew up in a middle class that didn't look down on sending its sons into the military, instead of college. And after that, the Company always took care of him. He's low maintenance.

Vlad doesn't have or understand the modern notion of capitalism. His thinking is still medieval on many levels.

Sherlock grew up rich, and as such, money is a problem other people spend their tedious little lives worrying about. He often runs into trouble with his creditors as they don't seem to share the same viewpoint.

River likes money, well enough, she supposes. She's been without, but never for long.

Earl thinks money is the just about the most clever, and the stupidest thing humans ever came up with.

Thank you, I find all the answers so interesting. Alex's ex-husband sounds like a jerk.

Clementine is ruled by two things: sex and money. She combines them when she has to, is nearly constantly in debt, and has a thousand odd jobs.

Dixie lives quite comfortably; she knows how to accept the right favors, then squirrel away what she makes. Her biggest expenses are costumes and traveling expenses, and if she needs to she'll ride saddle-free down a trail to make the next gig.

Jules never complains about money; she's very saavy and lives within her means, mostly because her father was a con artist who was constantly looking for the next big break that would make him insanely rich.

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