City Chairman Ray Ranson confirmed before Christmas that the club are losing money every season and with crowds not being up to the levels that City require on a regular basis, the City boss is only going to be able to bring players in on loan.
Speaking about contracts and finances to the CT's Alan Poole, Boothroyd said: "When contracts are concerned, each party has their own value - one is trying to seal a deal as cheaply as possible, the other is trying to get as much money as possible. Somewhere in the middle you are going to have not a confrontation but a discussion.
"It's up to the two parties to decide and generally there's a balance to be struck. If it's a no-deal situation that's it - the player runs downs his contract, you pat him on the back, thank him very much and off he goes.
"In this day and age, players read a lot of speculation about people being on £1m a week and all the rest of it and they think 'well if he is worth that, I'm worth this' but we are in a recession now.
"Personally, I've never chased money because I think if you're good at what you do it comes to you anyway. You've got to think about getting better as a player, winning medals because money will always follow medals.
"I genuinely believe that two players can work two or three years on a contract that is reasonable to propel them into the £1m a week stage.
"And I don't think at this point in time, any of our players - perhaps one or two who have been there and done it - are due a huge contract. One, the club is not in a position to do it because we haven't won anything for a long time and two, they don't deserve it because they are part of the team that hasn't won anything.
"When we do start getting to that stage we'll have different problems to what we have got now because then their value goes up. But right now I think the budget here is very reasonable, one that we can be successful with.
"Everybody knows we're not in the same financial position as some of our rivals but I don't worry about things like that.
"I've been fortunate that in a short career - only five or six years in management - I've had the opportunity to lead the team that were under-dogs because they had to scrimp and save to get by and a team that started as favourites because they had just come down from the Premiership and had more money than most.
"The fundamentals don't change, and sometimes you'd rather have a hungry team. You can see it with teams as well as certain individuals when they reach a certain stage and get fat and lazy and that's the time to change things around."