This is actually something that's a problem in a lot of sandbox games. The first game this occurred in was GTA3, which they thankfully improved on with Vice City in acquiring properties during the second half of the game. And again with San Andreas with all of the hundreds of things money was used for.
However starting with GTA4 Sandbox games began to get diluted with money. In GTA4 barring some of the more mild things like ingame food, hospital visits/police and a few other things. The only thing you spent money on was weapons. And even with that about halfway through the game you'd usually acquire weapons like the M4 which were default better than anything else. It didn't help that hospital visits didn't confiscate your weapons anymore so you basically never had to start from 0 unless you got busted.
After GTA4 basically set the mold for the modern sandbox game, games tended to follow it's example. In SR3 all you spent money on was guns and upgrades for your character. And again the same problem occurred where halfway through the game you'd get basically everything you wanted and money became a non-issue. In SR5 I only ever used money on upgrading. In some other popular sandbox titles like Red Faction Guerrilla, and Just Cause 2 pretty much the only things you could spend money on were weapons or vehicles. There are only a few notable exceptions to this like some of the Assassins Creed games like Brotherhood and Black Flag. Where you have an Assassins Guild/properties and a ship respectively you can spend money on upgrading throughout the game. And in those games money management is far more important and as a result you find yourself spending and gaining money constantly.
