I've noticed that sims moving around often wind up with a lot more money than they should, given their previous living situations and cash on hand. One obvious example happened just now, when Honey Darnell and Johnny Johnson (both of AP) married and moved into Six Gable Stables, the well-appointed stable across from the Miller and Loveland houses. House values are:

Six Gable Stables: §128,035 (furnished)
[Johnny's previous house]: §124,447
[Honey's previous house]: §162,280

According to SP Accounting:

General Income: §150
Move In Tranfer: §80,830 [I believe 20k from Johnny, the rest from Honey, but I can check]
Lot Sales: §286,727 [total from previous houses]
Lot Purchase: -§128,035
Net: §239,672
Assets: §367,707

All this is from the day of the move, at least according to SP notifications.

The problem is, Chuck Hobble still lives in the old house; Johnny didn't get to sell it. And Chuck didn't have the money to buy Johnny out either, although he apparently tried since his Family Funds value is zero. (As a side note, it was pretty rude of Johnny to marry into money AND take 20k cash with him while leaving his supposed best friend flat broke and unable to pay the bills.)

Is there any way to prevent this? I can fix it after the fact, but it would be nice not to need to intervene.

Hm I don't know, but there are some options in SP which have influenced this like
Move in Starting Fund Percent

• The percent of the remaining cash from the source households that is gifted to the new household
• This option is only used when the family is split, and part of the family moves out. If the entire family moves, all funds are automatically transferred.
• Default: 10

and this, did you maybe change the something here?

Arranged Marriage: Dowry Only To Poorer Family

• When enabled, dowries from arranged marriages only flow to the poorer family
• Default: True
• Module: Relationship StoryProgression

OR maybe edit this to prevent the situation - leaving a sim with zero

Romance: Arranged Marriage: Dowry Maximum

• When set, this option defines the maximum amount of family funds transferred to the other household when an arranged marriage is performed
• This value must be greater than "Dowry Minimum" to be used
• Default: 0
• Module: Relationship StoryProgression

Romance: Arranged Marriage: Dowry Minimum

• When set, this option defines the minimum amount of family funds transferred to the other household when an arranged marriage is performed
• This value must be less than "Dowry Maximum" to be used
• Default: 0

Thanks CDark. I definitely did not change the first setting; I found it when poking around after the fact, and it was still on default. For the others, I didn't change them either, but also, I was under the impression that they only applied to arranged marriages, the ones the player would explicitly set in SP.

And regardless of that, the question isn't why did the money go here and not there, it's why did SP give Johnny and Honey the funds from a house sale that didn't happen.

Yeah, then this can only be answered by Chain_Reaction I guess. I was only looking for options which have something to do with funds and move, marriage and such.