That $21,823 means you need $21,823 more than what you currently have.

It's amazing how many people this confused, me included.

If you are playing through the SP campaign, then you will need to complete the next story mission before you can advance. In that case, you would need to begin mission 3, which starts with meeting Juni on planet California Minor (California system).

I was figuring that if I made tons of money before engagin more of the story missions, then by the time I was doign the missions again and finishing them, I'd go straight to the next level after finishing the mission... meaning, if you finish mission 3 of the story, and are level 5 (I think?), and it says your next level reqiirement is to make more money, what I THOUGHT I could do was make that money in advance. You can't. No matter how much money you have, you always have to make a little more to gain the next level.

Interesting thing, though - your net worth includes the value of your weapons (which will have the same value regardless of where you sell them), ship, and cash, but NOT your cargo, which has different values in different locations. So, if you want to go up another level right after finishing a story mission, just see to it that you've got your cargo hold full of something that'll be very valuable on the station where you're ending the mission. Land, the mission ends, you go up a level, go sell your cargo, go up another level.

There's only two types of people who play Freelancer:
-Those who think the Sabre is the best ship;
-Those who are wrong.

Seems to me that "The Patch" has struck again...

Did you download and install the Freelancer patch from the Freelancer homepage?
If so, reïnstall Freelancer (you don't have to uninstall first) and you should be good to go. You might want to buy and sell at the same base something expensive if your level still didn't go up.

Don't worry about your savegames, they are in a different location and will not be deleted when you reïnstall.

look here for more info

Good luck.

Yeah, I installed the update for freelancer shortly before the problem occured. I was thinking that may have been the cause. In any case, the cash level required for my next pilot level remained unchanged even after I had cleared 100k . I started a new game and have already progressed past the plot point so in the end it was only a few hours wasted.

Thanks for your help anyway!