While gold at the beginning at the game has many uses (buying not yet available materials, speeding up crafting by buying recourses etc.), I feel the uses for gold start to com edown to hoard to increase net worth when you get to the point that you need to start selling things you overproduce (pelts, plants, animal products, common ore, crafted stuff). Since this reduces the feeling of value the gold has, I suggest adding a few high end uses for gold:
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Contractors: to many heartlings producing gold and to few to make that nicely designed building (which might even bug out due to its complexity)? Pay experienced people to do it for you. Just for the cost of the building (the increase in net worth) and a small fee (10-20% of the net worth), these experienced craftmen will come to your town, produce all the furniture and construct the whole building in what feels like a blink of an eye. This is currently already in game and accessable by cgheating (‘ib’), but it does not cost gold. Add a gold cost and an UI button and you have a great use for gold.
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Upgrade furniture: all these poor beds standing around? pay gold to upgrade these to more fancy beds instead of going through the hassle of removing the old bed, crafting a new one ond placing it, while you forget which heartling owned the bed in the first place and have to go through the whole list to find the new owner. This could also allow to upgrade to fine furniture (for a higher cost than the net value of fine furniture).
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Buy merchants: tired of using these market stalls every day to get rid of your overproduction due to the low gold amount these merchants have? Invest in them with a large sum of gold so they can become more professional, offer new things and, most importantly, have a higher gold amount to buy the stuff you don’t need.
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Hireling guards: just had a strong enemy raid, and did some of your soldiers get hurt and now have to rest before they can do more defending and patrolling? hire temporary guards to protect the town for you. For a small fee, you can get that kid from the next town with his wooden sword, but if you expect ogres and varanusses (varanae, varani, varanusi ?), you might be better of spending some more and hiring a true knight with his own cleric and troup of footmen. it will set your town worth back a bit, but destroyed doors and dead heartlings will probably do that too.
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Store exclusives: as final suggestion, add store exclusive high end items. these could provide a bigger boost than the upgraded worker outfit (more speed, bigger bag) and could come for all the different professions (except military). This allows for spending high amounts of gold on that cooks spoon of gold, or that mechanical blacksmith hammer which would really improve their crafting speed. furthermore, items like an better engineering cap or some safety goggles for your carpenter could also provide a small boost to happines, making this the perfect way to spend gold on overpriced, rare items.