I think the reason money is tight is early on you have no real direction. Ooooh clothes! Buy. Ooooh hotel options! Buy. Wait.. more girls? More clothes. Toys? Buy.
To be honest, as far as new players go,
Runey could prolly limit some of the store options until after 2-3 weeks in game has happened so you're far more likely to have the bar / story money to help alleviate the "I need money!" pattern new players seem to run into. Maybe treat clothes like Kali's hard drive, so that they're "sold out" until needed or X amount of time has passed.
Seems totally unnecessary, but years down the road we still have folks saying they don't have money.