Near staff officer on very little money (8)
I believe the answer is:
adjacent
'near' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'staff officer on very little money' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'money' could be 'cent' (eg denomination of dollars) and 'cent' is found within the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for adjacent that I've seen before include "Lying near or next (to)" , "Neither opposite nor hypotenuse?" , "Contiguous" , "Abutting" , "Next-door" .)