I'm just starting out in JA2. On normal level I start with $35000. I go to hire someone, e.g. MD. His cost is $4705 with equipment and medical for a week. After I contact and hire him my funds drop to -1,100 dollars (negative). After that obviously I can't hire any more mercs. I tried to save to see if the money reappeared on reload but save failed (because of the negative money?).
Anyone else had this problem or know where to look for an answer? I installed the vanilla GoG JA2, no patches. I tried turning off anti-virus and running as Admin (Vista) but nothing helped. Any help appreciated!

[Ignore all this - it's wrong]
His price is 4705 per day, if you've hired him for 1 weeks then that's going to be 4705 * 7 = 32935 (which should leave you with about $2100 positive, have you also gone on the IMP site and paid that?
You may want to either, start off with mercs on a smaller time period, or use the cheaper merc site (M.E.R.C - I think it's called).
[/Ignore]
EDIT: Just checked, were you hiring Michael Dawson MD? I'm able to hire him for one week for 4705, and it works.

Sorry, I'm aware that I've not actually posted anything that helps you other than to say - fine for me. Is your problem reproducible, or was a just a quirk? if a quirk of one game, I'd point to some corruption in memory, otherwise to some installation corruption. Failing that, installer corruption, so you'll need to re-download.
Regardless, there's probably corruption involved. I don't think it's a runtime configuration issue, it just doesn't make much sense. By all means prove me wrong.
But really the test is whether this is 1 merc that you got unlucky with, or every one. If it's just him, it's no big deal, and JA 2 can be enjoyed without (possibly more so, he's rubbish). If it's persistent then let us know.

Finally figured it out, just haven't had time to post until now. The problem was my internet security software. Even with anti-virus turned off my software runs unrecognized programs in 'sandbox' mode which allows them to run but protects various areas of the system. I hadn't seen the message window because it came up behind JA2. Apparently the money issue had to do with not being able to write something it needed to. Once I realized it was coming up in the sandbox I told my program to never run it in sandbox again, and the next time I ran JA2 the money problem was fixed (as was the problem with not being able to save a game). Thanks for the ideas!

Good catch!
I would not have come up with that suggestion in a million years. Glad to hear you're up and running. Enjoy one of the best games ever!

How do you turn sandbox off for ja2?