Unlike most other soulslikes I've played, AI Limit chooses to immediately make you lose currency rather than give you a chance to retrieve it, which I think is a design mistake.

If there's a boss that you wall at, there's no rhyme or reason to hold on to currency because you'd lose it all from the deaths. And chances are, the amount of currency the boss drops is not much more than what you lose.

The wise move, therefore, is before going into any new area, you spend as much as you possibly can at the last Branch in case of an unexpected boss, miniboss, or tough gauntlet of trash mobs and traps. And if you have a lot but not enough to buy the next level or item you want, grinding to hit the next threshold becomes mandatory rather than an option, and that lack of choice does not feel good (because you don't want to risk dying and losing currency), so you're constantly backtracking after each new Branch to only fight familiar enemies in familiar areas.

It is only during a grinding session that you ever consider holding currency (to buy w/e thing you're going for), where all you do is repeatedly go through the same farming loop.