I lost a bunch of money and XP, too. Really annoying.

If you're in a solo session, you can usually do missions and your progress seems to be saved after every successfully completed mission, but you can't be sure if the servers are really up and did save your progress.

Link your account to the [Rockstar Social Club][1], if you haven't already. Now open the [online progression tracker][2] (requires login) when you start the game and refresh it when you'd like to stop playing. Compare the XP/money earned with your actual progress. If your character is further than this page acutally shows, there is no other way than forcing a save by completing missions until your progress is saved and shows correctly on the Rockstar Social Club page. I just checked, presuming the servers are available, this site updates within a few minutes.

That's not a real solution - and if you're unlucky, you might be stuck in this progress for hours (in my experience usually around 17-23 o'clock GMT). But currently, that's just the way it is, until Rockstar gets their servers under control.

But at least, this way you can actually check your saved progress without leaving and possible losing money or XP.


  [1]: http://socialclub.rockstargames.com/
  [2]: http://socialclub.rockstargames.com/games/gtav/career/overview/gtaonline