Here I'll tell you a simple way how to get some money in this game, mainly it can be helpful in early game (especially if you're playing as a tribe and/or as a Count and money is a real problem). To be able to use this method you will need two DLCs (or at least one of them):

• Way Of Life
  
• Monks and Mystics

If you don't have any of these DLCs I'd recommend you to read the guide anyway - everything before the part where we start using them, and the "An extremely easy way" section.

Our goal is to find characters who have money and take it from them. There are two ways do it:

First, check your courtiers - open the "Ledger" window (shortcut ","), go to the "Your court" page and sort couriers by "Gold".


(yeah, unfortunately everyone is poor there)

Second, using "Characters finder" (shortcut "."). Filter by "Join Court" and "Ruler" (we are looking for landless characters who agree to join, you might want to leave "Join Court" to "Any" to see characters who will join your court if you send them a gift). Next, I'd recommend sort them by "age" - old characters first (I believe there are more chances that old characters have more money, also, if a character dies without heirs, his liege inherits his money).


Here you have to manually check each character in the list and see how much money they have, if you find someone who has some invite them immediately! If you didn't find anyone wait a few months/years and try again (the higher your title the more characters would like to join).

Now you need to imprison these characters (I have to say that you can imprison them without a reason but this will incur opinion penalty[ck2.paradoxwikis.com]). So, in order to get a reason for arrest you can switch to the Intrigue focus (Way Of Life DLC) and start spying on them:


Either you can join the Demon Worshipers or The Assassins (Monks and Mystics DLC) and use the "Attempt to Abduct" ability (this ability is available for all members even with the lowest rank).


There is one cool option that you can do with your prisoners - banishment. Banishment of the courtiers means they will be banished from the realm and all their money will be transferred to your character.


Cool, right? Several times I found characters who had 500+ and even 1500+ gold.

As I've mentioned above if a courtier dies without heirs his liege inherits his money, this is especially true for lowborn characters, so all you need to do is find lonely rich lowborns. Open "Characters Finder", filter by "Great House" (No) and "Join Court", check each courtier in the list, invite those who have money and then plot to kill them. Profit.

Always check the "Righteous imprisonment" notification and see who can be imprisoned and how much money they have. Courtiers is the number one target, landed characters as well as their spouses and children can only be ransomed (actually you can banish your vassals but you won't get their money), usually it doesn't worth to kidnap them unless you want to revoke their title.