Regarding gold...
That is highly realm and situation dependent. I've had precisely three characters who at any point in their life really had "surplus" gold. One of them was expressly created as an attempt to fill the coffers of House Bedwyr, and made a lot of money as a spy. One of them made it to a lordship in a completely peaceful realm with nothing going on, and the last is the Duke of a large city on Dwilight who only occasionally has surplus funds and those tend to get plowed into his religion or infrastructure improvements.
That's mostly because I've ended up playing in realms that are constantly fighting important wars where every piece of gold counted or on frontiers where there was jack-all gold to go around 
Consequently, House Bedwyr has the highest fame/family gold ratio that I'm aware of.
So, gold is one of those things that can depend on the place and time. It only annoys me when I see (for instance) the handful of people at the top of the realm leading 100 man units while most of the army is fielding fifteen or twenty. IC, I love seeing that in my enemies as it means I have a good shot at finding disaffected elements and it's incredibly inefficient. OOC, it bugs me, because that's the kind of thing that drives people away. Fifty vs thirty men is one thing, being a Duke has its perks. But 100 vs 15 is just silliness.
I've heard of knights in some realms on FEI receiving only 16-30 gold per tax. Such small amount seriously reduce the options and fun of knights in my opinion, and results in them constantly requiring handouts to support a decent unit. I'm sure some realms do this to ensure that the Lords/Dukes can dish out gold to the most "active" nobles, but to me its far too much micro control over the realm, to the detriment of some of the player base.
