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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 2729493" data-attributes="member: 3146">Let's go through the list and see what you've got:Palace upkeep:Your biggest expenses are food and building maintenance.Food for 67 people is running you 804gp/month. That's 12gp per person per month after you pay the 8 cooks and 1 chef. A bit excessive, I would say. If you were to just send them all off to a tavern for good meals at PHB prices, it would only run 15gp/month per person. You, however, are buying in bulk and paying staff to prepare it. If you could cut this down to half the cost of good tavern meals (3sp/day at PHB prices--and a 50% price cut isn't unreasonable, given that you're paying the cooks, providing the facilities and buying in bulk), you'd cut this down by about 500gp.You should also check to be sure that you need that many cooks. The chef is needed for impressing visitors, but eight cooks to fead about 70 people seems a bit much. You might be able to get by with half of that.Building Maintenance: 500gp. This doesn't leave you with a lot to work with, but you should go through and see if there are any specific items here that cost a lot in mainenance but aren't needed. For instance, if you have a veranda that costs a lot to keep up or a tower whose foundations are sinking, you should look into demolishing it and selling the timber/bricks/stonework. Anything that is costing you money and can be done without, should be done without.On to military expenses. These are about half your budget and this is where you have the opportunity to make the greatest savings.The biggest line item here is food which is costed at 12gp/person. At that price, you could just send the entire army out to get common tavern meals at PHB prices and you'd net a 25% savings. So, my recommendations: have the soldiers cook their own meals in a mess tent or something (perhaps you could have some of those excess cooks from the palace supervise) and see how much you can cut costs. If you get it down to half the cost of a common tavern meal, you've saved 2,460gp right there.You may be able to cut costs further by having the soldiers grow some of their own food when they are not training.The next biggest line itme here is equipment maintenance. At 1328gp per month, it's a huge expense. The first question is what is it that's costing 4gp per soldier. Is their equipment in particularly poor condition? And how expensive is it in the first place (if they're all equipped with leather armor and heavy shields, you could replace all of their armor once every six months and still cut the costs by about 50%). If their equipment is in poor condition, consider replacing some or all or it with equipment that will be less costly to maintain. Furthermore, consider what the four blacksmiths you currently have on payroll are doing. If they are not currently doing the maintenance, see how much you could save by having them do it. If they are, check to see whether they are being overworked and could be more efficient with an apprentice each (or something).Your  next biggest line items are soldiers' salaries. Not much you can do here (other than scutage as mentioned in some other posts) but consider a few options:1. You have 4 commanders, 8 captains, and 20 lieutenants for a force of 300 soldiers. That's an awful lot and could be a liability in time of war. You should cut this down a bit. Now, you probably don't want to demote anyone, so you'll need to go about this carefully. First, subtly investigate all of them. If they're honest, honorable and trustworthy, good for them. If they're not, deal with them. Second, consider if any of them are old enough to retire. Consider offering them an early retirement from your service. Third, consider other offices in that you have or could create. For instance, you have 20 palace guards but no chief guard or any individual directly responsible for training and organizing them. You might consider transferring a trustworthy captain or commander to be the captain of the palace guard. That won't save you money, but it will unclutter your chains of command. Similarly, you might consider whether the town needs a sheriff or a militia leader. Transferring a couple of officers to train and lead the town militia might well be a good investment--particularly if you can convince the town's guilds, etc. to pay half of their salaries or levy a new fee for the creation of a militia armory.The hedge wizards are also a big expense and powerful individuals. You don't want to alienate them, but make sure that they are actually loyal and trustworthy before you continue paying them. Investigate them and deal with any who don't pass muster.The next thing to consider is how you can leverage the soldiers and hedge wizards to reduce your other costs. You want them to spend a fair amount of time on training and on patrol, but otherwise, they should be doing something. Building roads, logging, and building/maintaining the town's fortifications are all things they should be doing. You should see if you can utilize the wizards' down time as well. Even just comandeering a few of their spells for maintaining armor and equipment might save you a bit of money.Next comes civil administration.The biggest three line items here are harbor upkeep, tax assessors, and courthouse maintenance. The rest are small expense here and there. You should, of course, get a competent and trustworthy auditor to look through everything for fraud and make sure that you're not spending more than you have to (200gp for courthouse maintenance, for instance, had better be maintaining a very big courhouse). The biggest item, by far is harbor maintenance. As others have said, this should be paying for itself--either in harbor and docking fees or in taxes on trade goods. If it's not and if the harbormaster is both honest and competent, consider selling the operation of the harbor to someone who can afford to spend full time making it profitable. Make them responsible for all the costs and maintenance at whatever monthly fee you can get. Make sure that the concession is only for a short period--a year, for instance, so that you can reassess it when the harbor becomes profitable.The next item is tax assessors. Make sure that they're all honest and aren't holding back on you or accepting bribes. If they pass inspection, see what you can do to make their job safer. Right now they're getting hazard pay; maybe if you sent a squad of four soldiers with them, they wouldn't need that.On to Ancilliary expenses:You're running 1000gp per month on entertainment. Cut it all. When you're spending nearly twice your income, you can't afford to put 5% of your budget on entertainment. If the king or someone else you need to impress comes around, summon a lillend (lesser planar ally/lesser planar binding, etc) or hire an entertainer. Even if you have to pay twice what you normally would have paid, doing that once a year instead of every month will net very significant savings.The next big expense is seasonal heating costs. See if you can cut these by simply not heating parts of the palace/castle during winter. Having your soldiers do some logging should also reduce this quite a bit.The royal tribute and the debt from the loan are the really big items that are killing you though. You should negotiate with the king to see if you can reduce that or at least pay a portion of it with military service, etc.As for the debt, the first thing you should do is make certain that you're obligated to pay it back. If the previous holder of the lands incurred the debt and you did not buy the holdings from him, it may be that he continues to be the one obliged to pay the debt and you are not. (If he was executed for treason or some such, you might also ask the king to declare you free of the traitor's debts). If it does turn out that you are liable for the debt, you should look into the possibility of refinancing it.Now, unless you can do something about the tribute and the debt, all of that still won't put you in the black (my estimate is that you might net 5000-6000gp of savings through those measures), but your reserves will last a lot longer that way. What you will really need is to open up some new sources of income. So far, the best places to look are probably the copper mine and the harbor. So, look into making those profitable witth the time you buy through the other stuff.</blockquote>

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