There are a lot of things you could do!

While very few titled landowners could be said to directly "tax" their tenants, they did squeeze tithes and fees from them. This in and of itself included lots of different things: our hypothetical titled landowner could build a mill and tax the grain taken to it, or our landowner could build a bridge and charge a toll to everyone crossing it. While the "medieval age" is a long and indefinite time period, it unquestionably refers to a pre-industrial economy where land is capital and capital most frequently translates to land, and this means that lots of thought would be given as to how the land would be worked. Is the land hummocky? Maybe more acres should be devoted to pasture. Is there a yearlong source of water? Then extensive irrigation might be possible. But what if that water source is marshy, can it be be drained by canalizing? All these are questions that landowners asked themselves in order to extract the most value from their land, and extracting value from land would be the central and most important component not just in their lives, but of any pre-industrial economy.

Outside outright working the land, a "Medieval Lord" by any definition will be in a privileged position compared his tenants, and probably be in a more privileged position than free landowners to. Even with no particular standing with a monarch or the clergy, possession of a title typically implies an extensive support network. This means that through friends and relatives, someone with capital on hand could invest in artisanal or mercantile ventures: a journeyman guild member stood little chance of ever owning a workshop unless they found someone willing to front the money to get started (or, more banally, if they stood to inherit), while organizers of mercantile ventures were always on the lookout for additional investors to share risk with. Urban and rural life wasn't all that disconnected (for the wealthy, that is): It wasn't rare for landowners to travel to the nearest city and town often, where they would visit courts of law to settle disputes; visit notaries to record sales or purchases of land and inheritances; as well as keep a pulse on various business ventures and opportunities, in addition to buying things for personal use (and this in addition to exchanging cash crops for food and supplies, as well as personal consumption, since even the most unimportant landowner would want to make sure their family looks good during, say, Christmas or Easter mass at the town cathedral).

Given the importance of the city in aristocratic life, even a relatively minor landowning clan could maintain a residence in the nearest city or town in addition to their estate in the country. The very famous Medici dynasty of Florence, for example, quietly materialize in the city's parish rolls in the thirteenth century. While later generations would become important bankers and politicians, these first Medici in Florence were doing something much more humble: overseeing the sale of wool they brought to the city from their pastures in the countryside (specifically, a part of the Tuscan countryside called the Mugello). The fact that the Medici would, through generations, develop into one of the most important financiers in the city and eventually come to rule Florence, very much attests to the fact that even the most unimportant minor landowners could become wealthy through trade and commerce if they were shrewd and fortunate enough.

Especially starting in the 15th century, is common to see important dynasties investing in imposing residences in cities from which to oversee their affairs. In fact, it would be in these urban residences that they would spend the most money to show up their rivals, in both terms of outward appearance as well as internal decoration. But minor landowners who did not jockey among high politics didn't need to own an imposing urban palace to also be successful in the city; a single floor in a building might suffice. Many times, an aristocratic home in the city was a simple three-story affair: a groundfloor rented to an artisan or shopkeeper, a second floor typically rented out as living space (either to an urban professional or the shopkeeper on the ground floor), with only the third floor inhabited by the building owner. And a landowner who didn't have the resources to purchase real estate in the city (or didn't stand to inherit any) could likewise rent a floor, if they didn't have any close friends or relatives willing to host them. And the presence of close friends or relatives would itself be vital: family, both close and extended, constituted the tightest and most secure professional network present in the pre-welfare era. While this would be true for almost everyone, progressing higher up the social ladder belonging to an important clan would increasingly important. An aristocrat who wanted to do anything from oversee the delivery of cash crops all the way to investing in mercantile ventures could rely on this network to be their eyes and ears in the city. Across several prosperous dynasty (and the Medici cited in the paragraph above are no exception) there is even a trend whereby some branches of a dynasty could become well established in cities while other branches instead remained in the countryside. Although sometimes the urban and rural branches became alienated from each other (with one or the other falling into obscurity) other times they developed close rapports of collaboration, working together to guarantee their prosperity through the decades and generations.