There are two types of colonial styles: trading and colonizing. The traders build lots of TPs and a few colonies (mainly on low trade value provinces (grain, wine, etc). The colonizers build all colonies and try to get them all up to city size.
If you are going the trading route, you have to make sure you are a trading machine and turn autosend OFF. Capture as many Centers of Trade (COT) as you can. Manhattan is a good one for England to pick up. You will probably have to declare war without a Casus Belli, but it is worth it to get a COT. Send your merchants to your COTs and drive off the competition. Increase the value of the COT by building more TPs and colonies. Let the cash roll in.
If you are going the colonization route, send out colonies to high trade value areas first (you still want to do some trading, after all). But send out colonists until your colony gets up to 700 people and becomes a city. Then start over in a new province. The point is to get the taxes from your colonies, so improve them with forts (to keep out pirates, natives, and dirty Europeans) and infrastructure improvements (tax collectors/judges/mayors).
If you are playing Single Player, change a Domestic Policy (DP) slider every ten years (you can only move one every ten years). You lose one stability, but it is worth it. The direction you need to be moving your sliders in is dependent on the country you are playing. England should (in most cases) move towards Plutocracy, Free Trade, Naval, Quality, and Free Subjects. You can leave the other sliders alone for the most part since they are either already where you want them (in the middle) or moved frequently by events (centralized and innovative). Moving your sliders can give you more colonists, make your troops better, increase your trade efficiency, etc. So try to make the most of them.
Dont worry about not having enough money. I have found there are only 2 reasons to have money in your treasury:
1. You are saving up for something (factory/shipyard/etc).
2. You are doing something wrong.
Dont worry about running out of cash in March, that is fairly normal actually. Not so much so in Multiplayer cause your uncertainty about war is much higher, but very normal in Single Player.
I hope this helps. Learning to play this game is hard, but well worth the effort. Since it is the best game ever made after all.
