Out of curiosity, what did you guys do in order to make so much money to purchase 10k or 15k homes? I really want a 15k home really bad! I have about 7,500 currants now.
Mining is good. It bores me though, so I prefer Animal Kinship for butterfly milking and chicken squeezing. Squeezing chickens also gets you some nice music boxes, food, and occasionally Pungent Sunrises (speeds up learning for 2 minutes) and between food from chicken squeezing and meat from piggy nibbling, you'll never have to buy food.
I'm mostly the gardening track myself. Bought myself a 4k home in the first 6 hours of the game. Until you get past 20th level you will be given money every time you level. It helps - a lot! Just play the game. Do the quests and learn skills as fast as you can. If you want money fast, go the mining track, but that's not the only fast way to make money.
I was at 36k when the game closed, and at least fourty 50k homes have been sold already (checking the listings). I could have purchased one of those on day 2, but decided to spend my currants on big bags and boosting my learning times instead. I also got my first badge from all the different giants to get that out of the way. I'll get the home I want a few hours after the game comes back up. Then it's EHSP farming time!
I bought a 15k house this test plus several tools and a generic bag and a bigger bag (and a lot of food that I ate while I was mining). I learned Mining 1 and 2 and mined a LOT! The gems I got from mining were donated to shrines to get emblems. I'm going to be easing off mining when the game opens again. As Sid said it does get rather boring. If you have some friends who can mine with you in a group you get a better return and it's much more fun.
ETA: oh yeah. I'm also retired so I could play a lot! :)
It is better to invest in a good number of bags before you buy a house. You'll find you need to carry around lots of 'stuff' even after you have your house, so your first 10,000 I would spend on bags. And the various tools.
Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but what does one do with mined sparkly rock? I've been crushing it all down and making random powders with alchemy, but I have no idea what I'm doing really...