I am definitely not reloading old saves, nor am I creating new saves with the same name.
I thought I might have to go in and delete some file. Problem is, Kerbal Space Program is a big folder, and I don't even know where to looking. I tried doing a search for "131000" which is the current cost of a new kerbal whenever I start a new game on hard (and I have two save files with this), but nothing came up in the search.