Regarding the money thing - this is actually something I'm feeling twisted 9?) about, because of the setting and 'grind'.
- For me the setting/story emphasizes that it's hard to make money in Scarlett, and that contracts are generally too expensive for most male Scarlett resident's to afford. We get the mother's contract thanx to someone else, and then only need 1k gold for the sister?
- Tying in with this is the amounts of money you can earn. You can earn money super, super quick... which again, goes completely against the story/setting.
- We can buy the shop for 1.5K gold, yet it produces on average ~200g a day, or ~450-500g a day if you work there as well. We make the gold back in a week to a week and a half easy. For a shop that's apparently not making much money.. we make money easily from it. Why is it being sold that cheaply?
On the other hand, if you make the wages and prices more 'realistic' to the setting, the game would then become a boring grind of doing the same things over, and over, and over again. IE work for mum in the morning, work at buiulding place at noon, work at shop in afternoon, and work for princess at evening. Repeat 20+ times. *boring* lol
As someone said - having higher cost items/shops/contracts/etc is fine, as long as there is other things to do while grinding out the gold. Obviously as the game is new... it'll feel extra grindy for ppl playing each update as they come, as they'll have nothing to interspace the grind.
You can see the dev has considered this, or at least seems so to me, by having the 'work' also increase the relationship between ppl. So it would be eay to grind money, get to relationship points, while building to event(s), and back to money grinding. The more girls and/or relationship level's we have... as well as side-events that crop up, the less 'grindy' the grind will feel.
Just my 2 cents. I don't mind the 10K contract myself... as long as we can continue doing other things while working on the gold grind.