Sounds like you are a noob. I never needed to do much about money, I just went straight for the biggest, best army, and for capturing cities. Tournament victories, loot and prisoners give you more than enough. Cities give you a good profit too.
This means I can easily outrun any army chasing me and catch up to any army.
With such a pathetic army there is no point of catching up to anyone though xD
Meanwhile, I was earning 11000 denars per week from all my businesses.
Yeah, and first you had to put hundreds of denars into it, at which point you are just better off using this to proceed faster, because enterprises take months to even start paying off xD
By keeping my party small and not joining a faction in the early-game, I ended up with 1.9 million denars when I entered the mid-game at about level 35.
What the ****? Ok, now admit how many days did it take you? And why would you even need so much money? How did you not get bored doing nothing but grinding money which you will never use, for dozens of hours? xD
You probably spent a lot of that time just waiting in castles, to skip a few weeks, and get profit, instead of getting money like a normal player xD