[Wealth] House system for wealth and assets, critique please

[muranternet]

Long time lurker and GURPS player/GM, first post. I've working out a house system to handle the temp/starting wealth problems that have been discussed in other threads, and think this is a decent compromise. Please comment and tell me why it won't work. This has been worked out for a TL3/early 4 typical fantasy-era campaign with appropriate examples, but translates into other TLs easily.

Splitting Wealth into Assets/Wealth (Earnings Potential)
Wealth is handled by chopping it into two leveled traits called Assets and Wealth. Assets covers starting wealth levels and the ongoing total assets of the character. Wealth covers the earnings potential of the character at jobs, whether full time or contract. Each is bought as per the current Wealth advantage with a -50% modifier.

At creation time, the Assets trait determines the starting wealth of the character in cash and equipment. As the campaign progresses, if the character accumulates money and stuff that puts him past the next Assets level, Assets must be bought up or the money lost somehow (hookers and booze, charity, etc.). If the character loses net worth, he doesn't get the points back, but neither does he lose the trait. It just means that if he recovers his money later, he doesn't have to make up the point difference.

Wealth is applied as a standard job table modifier for mundane jobs, and also affects the money earned via in-game contract offers, etc. (It doesn't cover a flat reward, e.g. "$1000 for the head of Sir Badguy"; this can be treated the same as found treasure, going into Assets.)

A character can have radically different Assets and Wealth traits. For instance, a character who has Poor Wealth [-7] but found a suitcase full of money and a Wealthy Assets [10] trait has the money and whatever it can buy for him (maybe paying for higher status Cost of Living or better stuff), but he's still only going to be offered poor levels jobs if he looks for them. A modern character who has Poor Wealth [-7] who works at the gas station and wins a lottery jackpot for Multimillionaire 1 Assets [38] is not suddenly eligible for a job as a bank president. If he loses his money and needs to find a job, it will be a Poor one unless he buys up the Wealth trait.

Conversely, the example given in another wealth thread about a whizbang financial analyst with crushing student loans or who got caught in a Ponzi scheme before the campaign starts could be bought with Wealthy Wealth [15] and Struggling Assets [-5]. If he spends his first few sessions rebuilding his portfolio successfuly, he will have to pay the points difference to make up his Assets trait.

The Free Status: Sidenote
The 1 level of free Status from Wealthy doesn not come into play until both Wealth and Assets are bought to the Wealthy level (10 + 10 CP). This is a consequence of both the possession of money (Assets) and the ability to keep earning it (Wealth). I don't personally like this rule though, as a slumdog millionaire character is not automatically respected by high society, and consequently would be taking either Status -1 to balance it or some other similar social disadvantages. In effect it just makes Wealthy cost 15 points.

The Gameplay Consequences of Assets
If ongoing wealth accumulation has no consequences pointwise, then any points spent on Wealth or Starting/Temporary Wealth are effectively wasted. The character is better off taking the bare minimum of gear and waiting until they find a briefcase full of money. Conversely, the RAW rule of buying up your total Wealth score whenever you get money makes little sense, as the dead broke hobo who finds a car with $500,000 worth of sellable narcotics in the trunk is now fated to spend all the earned CP from the next 10 adventures on paying off his wealth and is suddenly qualified to be a captain of industry. He has little incentive to earn CPs at all, or indeed keep playing the character.

By splitting off assets and paying for that part only, the GM reaches a suitable compromise where a character who started out with less money does so with the knowledge that if they happen to get rich in the future, it will take a bite out of his CP at a time when he might rather be spending it on some other skills. The character who "wasted points" on money at the campaign start may have to also spend some CP, but not nearly as much. A character who goes from Poor Assets (TL3 $200) to Very Wealthy Assets (TL3 $20,000) has a lot of new spending power, but also a 22CP debt to be paid, which is very annoying but not insurmountable. A character going from Comfortable to Very Wealthy assets has a similar increase in spending power, but only a 10CP debt. When the Poor asset guy complains about the fact that it seems unfair, the Comfortable asset guy can counter that it seemed unfair that he had to spend 12CP extra at the campaign start to buy equipment.