“YOU! Guess what? Money is important! If you don't have it, your weapons will rust, and you can't fight without your weapons!
—A Villager in Chapter 1 of Fire Emblem: Binding Blade
Gold ( ゴールド)is the currency used in the Fire Emblem series to buy various weapons and items at armories and shops and is often abbreviated simply as "G". In certain cases, gold is even needed to recruit characters.
There are several ways to earn gold. You can sell items at shops or the battle preparations screen. An example would be the various gems you can find (i.e. Red Gems, Blue Gems, e.t.c), either by stealing from enemies, taking from chests or selling the ones that come with the characters. You can also get gold directly from chests. Some enemies may drop gold upon defeat such as the monsters from the Tower of Valni. If you fight in an arena and win, that would also earn you some gold at the risk of losing your character. Various villages may provide gold if they are visited by one of your characters. Lastly, some story events will also give you gold to spend.
The amount of gold you have affects the Funds rating in various games in the series such as Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken and Fire Emblem: Binding Blade. To have a high Funds rating, it is advised that you do not sell your gems or any unused promotional items. The game determines the amount of gold you have by taking the worth of all the items in your inventory and adding it to the gold you have. If you sell an item, you usually get half the gold it was worth, so keeping an item instead of selling it helps twice as much with your Funds rating.
In most games, gold is a mass fund that every character has access to, meaning that when any character receives gold, any other character can use it to buy items. This is different in Fire Emblem: Genealogy of the Holy War, where every character has their own gold. In that game there is a 50,000 gold limit for every character, and gold can only be traded between characters that are in love.