My first settlement went flat broke in a day by following the tutorial, so I re-started the game and ignored environment and population to research the mining tree instead. Start off be researching up to Palladium, then place an outpost and begin mining; drop 4-5 mines per outpost, making sure to search for the most expensive minerals FIRST and making your way down through the mineral tree to silver (don't bother with carbon or iron until you've stripped everything else out); this should get your cashflow heading upward nicely. Once your finances are back up to decent levels, research Rhodium and establish another two outposts, rinse and repeat; Within a day I was up to 20 million and rising. After three days I'm up to 71 million and ready to start working on terraforming