I'm left wondering, are these people aware they're playing a roleplaying game?
I'm just . . . if the character doesn't want a house, or a tower, or care about his living standards, or have a charity to support, or some end they want to achieve, why is he character going on adventures at all? And if the character does have goals, well, aren't those goals an obvious use for the gold?
Would this whole "gold is useless" thing be solved if we added a Random Life Goal Table in the "Personality and Background" chapter of the PHB, so that people who don't invent goals for their own character can say, "All right, my character wants to be emperor, and to recruit and equip an army, I'll need this much gold, so . . ."