Look up the ingredients for Weapon Repair Kits and never sell those ingredients, repair kits will save you thousands of caps over having people repair things and using weapons you could sell as repair items. Skill books are much more rare than in F03 and the magazines only give you a temporary boost. Save your skill books until you get the second perk. Take the perk for an extra +2 skill points / level (educated?) ASAP, then the perk for doubling the effect of magazines and gaining +1 from skill books. Keeping a Wasteland Doctor outfit lets you add +5 medical when needed. Look at clothing effects - if like me you put almost no points into Barter then finding a roving trader hat and outfit gives you +10 to Barter. I suggested these couple of mods to create a new experience that takes the things I liked in Survival mode and adds them to New Vegas to make for a more challenging and rewarding roleplay experience for myself. I like New Vegas Hardcore mode but dont think it went far enough. If you ever see a sniper rifle silencer, buy it right then! I cannot play Fallout 4 on any other difficulty because I found it boring. This can be a problem if you're looking for specific weapon mods like silencers. Dealer stock is replenished once a week(?) and is somewhat random. I haven't wanted to bother with all of that so said no to it.

Hardcore is separate from that: you must eat and drink, you can be crippled, gun ammo has weight, and companions can die. If you've played FO3 already I'd suggest playing the game on Hard or even Very Hard difficulty since at least on Very Hard the game gives you access to better guns.

Fallout new vegas hardcore mode