For the most part, all of my warriors make somewhat decent change. What I, personally, do is not buy any armor until about lvl 20. I also find a good training spot with ledges and ropes to use to escape if I'm low on hp, and use the relaxer often (especially at places like pig beach).
However, for earlier characters, I did buy armor every 5 lvls and still had decent change left over... My lvl 35 fire mage on khaini has about 300k, after spending 400k shopping for other chars. Of course I went close to 0 after the spree and decided to grind in Ludi. My sin-in-training lvl 22 has about 30k after buying three scrolls from an NPC and grinding in the subway for a spell.
What this means for waiting to buy armor, I don't know for sure...