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[robkelk]

Wikipedia disagrees with this one.

Salarium

Similarly, the Latin word salarium linked employment, salt, and soldiers, but the exact link is not very clear. More modern sources maintain instead that although Roman soldiers were typically paid in coin, the word salarium is derived from the word sal (salt) because at some point a soldier's salary may have been an allowance for the purchase of salt or the price of having soldiers conquer salt supplies and guard the Salt Roads (Via Salaria) that led to Rome. However, there is no ancient evidence for either of these hypotheses.

Some people even claim that the word soldier itself comes from the Latin sal dare (to give salt), but mainstream sources disagree, noting that the word soldier more likely derives from the gold solidus, with which soldiers were known to have been paid

There's a big difference between "being paid in salt" and "being given an allowance to buy salt".

EDIT: Also, "white gold" is gold alloyed with a white metal, often but not always silver. (Add some copper to a gold/silver alloy and you get "green gold", also called "electrum"... which is where Gary Gygax got the name for that type of coin in D&D. And Now You Know.) It has nothing to do with salt.