Here is my character:

http://i50.tinypic.com/9iz1n5.jpg

Forgive the shot, I play on 360 and cannot take nice screens like you guys have on PC. Here is how much gold she has:

http://i45.tinypic.com/34ph06u.jpg

Has anyone else hit the 1 million septim mark? I've found that Prowler's Profit was key in order to get to this level, but two perks in the lockpicking tree (Golden Touch and Treasure Hunter) helped as well, especially since I got a lot more "Expert Robes of Conjuration" and some other items worth 1000+ gold in addition to the ridiculous amount of gems gained through Prowler's Profit helped a great deal.

Sure, there's no specific reason for getting 1 million gold, but its a nice accomplishment.

How much gold does your characters have?

They should have 500K and 1 mil in gold as achievments, but oh well. I usually don't get more then 100k in gold because I stop bothering to to pick stuff up to sell after awhile.

I finished out with well over a million on the first serious character I played, and that was after buying all the vanilla houses and all the furnishings and sinking a ton of money into training because I didn't know what else to do with it. No perks in Lockpicking, no Prowler's Profit. Pure warrior/adventurer character with crafting as a sideline. I maxed out Smithing and at some point just improving the high level gear I was finding + sticking a halfway decent enchantment on all of it meant I could temporarily bankrupt every vendor in Skyrim.

Just hit 1 million and 500k myself, this morning. Maybe later i'll post a picture.

Just broke 8 million last night. But don't fret... what I've seen is that most people find 1 million very hard to hit and is still an achievement... especially if they're not a thief.

Prowler's profit does help, but isn't as necessary as accessible gold from vendors is limited. I can tell you my stockpile supply of gems and items is waaaay over what I can sell. Despite only keeping Dwarven, Ebony, Dragon and Daedric items - I'm thinking of ditching the dwarven soon (but I love nabbing that stuff so much! ).

Perk-wise you definitely highlighted some good ones, but speech is probably the most important. Here are some highlights:

?) Haggling - maxing that to 5, combined with at least 2 enchanted price items can let you hit the max vendor sale cap on items (and reduce prices super-low if you buy). Early on before this - I suggest hitting the Zenithar shrines. There's actually one near Whiterun... north of a bandit cave east of whiterun (I'll have to check later which it is)

?) Merchant - Being able to sell anything to anybody is huge too (another Perk in speech)...

?) Fence - As a thief, I CANNOT stress enough the perk to be able to sell stolen goods to any vendor (it SAYS to ones you invest in, but it's actually every vendor in the game!)

?) investing - while adding 500g to a shopkeep doesn't sound like much, adding it to 20 shopkeeps means an extra 10,000g in your pockets. More importantly is the surprise investment you could make in the Riverwood trader (((minor spoiler))) instead of increasing his gold supply to 1,500g, it increases to over 10,000g!!

?) Master trader - 1,000g increase for (almost) every vendor in the world is VERY good for hitting the high numbers. Some vendors aren't effected by this (most innkeepers, for example) - but some surprising ones are (the fruit/veggie vendor in Whiterun, the innkeeper at the Bee n' Barb, every fence in the world, ect.)

Another technique I also do is to not craft up/enchant every single item I get. I only enchant some daggers - and even then I stopped as I can't sell all of them and have a huge backlog. Just picking up everything and vendoring them without blacksmithing/enchanting them saves a TON of time, and you can be off on your next adventure collecting loot instead of sitting in Whiterun grinding away on those iron and steel items for minuscule profits.

Now... ultimately... do you NEED 8mil? Heck no.... and this is coming from a PS3 player who has no expansions at all. But you know what? it's a HELUVA lot of fun doing tons of trading/selling/thieving and getting rich! I'm actually quite looking forward to, one day, playing Hearthfire should it come out - and can purchase TONS of everything I need for those homes!

Let's see:

~400k on my first character (all houses & upgrades)
~300k on the 2nd (also with all houses/upgrades)
~150-200k on the 3rd & 4rth (just breezehome) and finally,

~350k on my current/latest character, after having bought/furnished all the available houses for purchase and built/furnished the ones coming with Hearthfire.

I wasn't able to abuse the Riverwood Trader anymore on the PC because the Unofficial Skyrim Patch fixes his perked gold from 10000 to the usual 1700+. One of these days I'll learn the Creation Kit and reintroduce that little glitch back to Lucan...