There might be an issue with the saving system, as whenever I load a save it "kills" me and I have to immediately respawn. When I do this it resets my star count to zero and my money to $5, or in some cases it just freezes the loading screen indefinitely. I'm assuming this is a bug but I'm not sure if there's an actual bug reporting area so I'll put it here until I find one
Edit: Tombotr and Femage found out what was going on, so my comment is obsolete :)