I'm in Year 3 of turning a team around. My last bad contract comes off the books this year ($4M for released player). I have several talented players that will be in AA this year. What would YOU choose for your budget. 

Here is what I have now:
                                        
Player Payroll               $54M (Max if everyone re-signed  = $48M)
Prospect Payroll           $20M
Coaches Payroll           $11M
HS Scouting                   $16M
/Coll Scouting                 $16M
Int'l Scouting                   $16M
Adv Scouting                  $16M
Training                           $20M
Medical                             $16M

You most likely won't be turning anything around with so little in payroll unless you are planning on tanking the next 5 seasons. I never put less then $95M in payroll. Where to save for payroll? Your scouting is overkill. Pick one of either HS or College and go $20M in one and zero in the other. Having high draft / IFA scouting then high advanced is a waste because you can just make notes on the player cards of the projections you see before the draft and save yourself $20M on advanced.  

Here are my thoughts on that strategy. If you plan on trading at all, having a low arc scouting budget makes no sense. I guess I do understand picking either HS or Coll scouting and maxing out one. If you are rebuilding, and your max budget (assuming you re-sign everyone is $48M), I'm not sure how having a player budget of $95M will start to make me competitive. I have a young team, and most of my guys are signed for league min or in years 1 or 2 of arb. Any more thoughts on this topic?

Get rid of adv scouting, and one or the other of your draft scouting and max the other.  14 mil is probably the most you'll ever need for IFA scouting.   You don't need a high player payroll to have a decent team.  All you have to do is go after the "table scrap" free agents, which can usually give you a good enough team to finish with at least 70 wins.  Try to free up as much cash as possible to go after an elite IFA.  If you really have several talented players in AA, you won't need to be making trades.  Also, you can get a good guess about a player's projections by looking at his development pattern.  Adv scouting is a waste; you could be using that cash for way more useful purposes (free agents/IFAs).  Or, watch this:  whatifsports.com/forums/Posts.aspx

Having a higher payroll will make you competitive because you can sign players instead of waiting 6 seasons for top 5 draft picks. Also arbitration will get you eventually and you won't have the flexibility to move your payroll up when you can only move those scouting categories $4M per season.

If you're in year 3, the turnaround should be well in progress. 

Posted by MikeT23 on 2/17/2012 8:27:00 AM (view original):
If you're in year 3, the turnaround should be well in progress. 

+1

Unless all you want to do is build a "superteam" - which requires planning to lose, holding guys in the minors extra seasons, and a few extra dollars out of your pocket.

Oh, and lose the ADV.  At least for now, all the information you need from your ADV is obtainable by tracking drafts and watching development patterns.

To be fair, if you intend to trade for players in their second season, you may want to keep the ADV.   Or be prepared to do your homework.   You know where a player was drafted.  But you have to check the drafting owners previous drafts to confirm he's not a dumbass.    If he doesn't produce BL players from picks 20-30, getting his comp pick drafted at 36 is probably not going to work out.

The optimal budget is dependent on far more information than you provided.  Additionally, it will be dependent on your particular strengths and the strengths and preferences of your world-mates.

The optimal budget for me almost always has more than $54mm in player payroll.  I fund this through reduced scouting, which other people have allready advised.It 

It would be very rare for me to want less than at least $80mm in player payroll, if I can field a team of the quality I desire for less I would rather be able to transfer the surplus to prospect payroll rather than spend incremental dollars on scouting. 

The thing about the transferring to prospect and the race for the IFA's, which I have done occasionally, is that it creates an inefficient market.  Since a large portion of owners are trying to discover treasure through the IFA market, they're risking a lot of cash to do so.  This creates a pretty good market for 2nd tier free agents.   You really do have to look at your world and what people do, but the points on ADV and on being able to compete in a pretty short time stand.

You can't transfer much to prospect with all that money in scouting anyway.

I would definately cut IFA scouting to 12m.  If you're trying to sign a big IFA, having $2m more in prospects via transfer is worth it moreso than getting better projections.

$11m in coaching is more than I would spend as well, assuming your FI is returning, although I sometimes over-budget there with the intent on transferring back to prospects later if the money is not needed for coaches.

I would certainly cut Adv to $12m, on the way to $0, and go $20m Col/$12m HS, on the way to $0 HS.  I prefer college to HS because you'll see more players, but if your world has a lot of $10mCol/$0HS owners in it, then maybe there's an efficiency to going $0Col/$20mHS.

Apart from you get worse projections and see fewer players, i know which id rather have.
HS/College depends where you're picking, if you're picking top 5, having both as close to 20M as you can get is beneficial.

Here have been my budgets for my team in No Quitters. I took the team over before rollover in S7.

S8: 80 Payroll, 12 prospect, 13 coach, 16 college and HS, 8 international, 10 advanced, 15 training and medical
S10: 63 payroll, 20 prospect, 16 coach (wtf?), 20 college, 8 HS, 16 international, 2 advanced, 20 training and medical
S12: 76 payroll, 20 prospect, 9 coach, 20 college, 0 HS, 20 international, 0 advanced, 20 training and medical

And now in S22 I have settled in on something like:

102 Payroll (dropped to 84 in transfer to prospect)
20 Prospect (up to 29 after transfers)
7 Coach
0 College
0 High School
16 International
0 Advanced
20 Training
20 Medical

I dont see how 0/0 for college and hs is a good idea.  Even picking 30th or so, Id like to have some cash in there to make the most out of the late first rounder.