The article deals with one of the issues in the history of the Livadia estate. Based on the materials of the funds of the institutions of the Ministry of the Imperial Court, stored in the Russian State Historical Archive, a comparison is made of approaches and attitudes to the allocation of funds for construction work. The author notes that the works produced by the architect I. A. Monighetti in the 1860s were carried out without prior approval of estimates. However, this decision did not lead to exorbitant costs, and a check made by specially appointed commission even revealed savings relative to the sums assumed by the architect. Considering the second reconstruction the author turns to the analysis of financing the project of architect N.P. Krasnov - the construction of the Grand Livadia Palace and several service buildings attached to it. The article notes that these works from the very beginning received a special status. The author points out that the multi-stage financing system several times led to the fact that requests submitted from the Crimea were processed with a delay, and the available money was not enough to pay the bills. The article dwells on the fact that the established financing scheme allowed the architect to exceed the preliminary estimate by several times. At the same time, officials in Saint Petersburg did not pay attention to cost overruns for a long time, becoming interested in this circumstance only at the final stage of the project, when there was no other choice but to complete the construction, reconciling with significant over planned expenses.