Mount and Blade Message Board  

In case anyone hasn't seem this already, the game itself includes what can be considered a pretty much universal cheat.
I don't see it mentioned in this message board, so I thought I'd mention it...

Go to the "Character" page and click on the button "Statistics" (natively in lower left corner).
There you can click "Export Character".
Doing so will result in a file by the name of the exported character in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mount&Blade\CharExport" or "C:\Program Files\Mount&Blade\CharExport" depending on your version of Windows.
It is a textfile, so it can be edited manually.
Change all and any stats to whatever you want (including money and XP for leveling).
The go back to the game and press the "Import Character" button.
Voila! Now you have those stats.

Not that too much money will cause it to wrap around into negative, attributes peak at 99 and skills normally peak at 10.
The skills peak can be increased using "TweakMB" (look at "M&B Repository" or Taleworlds forum for it).
Be careful to not increase the peak for "Weapon Master" however as some values will somehow make it impossible to raise proficiencies further, so might as well leave that peak at the original 10.

Note that even if the peak level of skills are raised with TweakMB, importing a character will only give the skill-level 10, so to counter this: Adjust the value of "skill_points" in the textfile to match the number of skillpoints you want distribute in total above level 10.

Some mods do include the capability of editing companions this way as well.
All such cases I have encountered have been through the "Camp" screen and usually "Take An Action"/"Mod Options".
If it is available you will get a screen with further (easy) instructions.

All of this is also available for Mount&Blade Warband, exactly the same way.