The various guilds offer beds and a chest. There is even a chest in Helgen that one can use.

But there is nothing wrong with buying the house in Whiterun and giving yourself gold. One will never run out of gold anyway and there is no tax office in all of Skyrim to come after you.

I wish I could donate gold, weapons and armor and thereby upgrade the guards in the holds and hire a few more to make Skyrim saver. At least then I had something to do with all the gold and stuff...

This was all averted on my Orc Archer somehow...
For once in a long time, money is kind of an issue on this character. I trained heavy armor to 70, I trained several bits into Archery, I'm buying arrows, I just bought her Whiterun house (And she'll eventually move to Windhelm, closer to her tribe of Narzulbur), and other stuff. She's just... buying stuff. She's level 40 and has like 3000 gold. My thief, as a level 40, had 40,000 gold. Or thereabouts.
I attribute some of this to the fact that she only has 350 carry weight. And not counting heavy armor due to the weightless-when-worn perk, she still has 100 pounds worth of essentials to lug around. In comparison, Thiefgirl only has about 62 pounds of essentials, and she has ~500 carry weight due to a pickpocket perk.

But so far, once my characters get the money rolling... it never stops.

I am at 400k gold. I loot everything. I leave nothing unturned and absolutely clear entire caves on my first visit (visits thereafter get less attention).

I once made a picture of all the stuff in Breezehome after I dumped it onto the floor: [img]http://img560.imageshack.us/img560/6686/garbagedump.jpg[/img]

On my rich characters, I mostly give up picking some stuff up because the hassle of running around finding people to afford my crap just isn't worth the time.

I love exploring and looking for unique stuff, but hate the bother of looting items and having to sell them, so I only loot gold and stuff I use like Alchemy ingredients and soul gems. I have still managed to accumulate 175K gold after owning and decorating 3 houses. I am guessing money is easy to come by in Skyrim.

Yup. Unlike Morrowind.... *rolls eyes*

If you take up Alchemy, it's insanely easy to come by. My most recent character (since restarted due to adjustments to one of my mods) did that, and ended up with over 1.2 million septims. He actually earned 1.7 million+, but dropped over half a million on training fees.

NOTE: trying to sell all those potions svcked, until I got the Investor perk and dropped 500 on Lucan Varelius in Riverwood; that pushed his cash on hand to 10,750, and let me sell in bulk lots. The Merchant perk helped, since that let me sell them anywhere, but when you have 400+ potions in your inventory and some of them have a base value of 2200+, it takes a long time to get rid of them all.

No. The thing I did in order to buy the house in the beginning of the game, the soonest possible after having killed the dragon, was work at Gerdur's mill. Cutting wood during three days allowed me anough money to buy the house and decorate it.

I can chop tree all night and for 2 nights I get 5k, like other have said 5k is quite easy to get hold off.

LOL, that's a win! Funny, for me housekeeping is so much easier in a game than IRL.

I took alchemy on my current thief character (to make poisons for arrows), and selling off potions made while leveling my alchemy skill has given me more than enough gold for anything I want. The first thing I did after Helgen was book it to Riften and join the Thieve's Guild, followed by becoming Thane of Riften.

Honeyside is actually nice, and there's an enchanting table. I like it more than Breezehome.

I just live in Anise's Cabin until I can buy the house of my choice. There is one safe storage container there, an alchemy table, enchanting table and safe bed. It gets me by just fine...without cheating. If i was on computer I would "cheat" and make my own house instead of just giving myself money.

Only thing I've ever cheated on was adding lock picks when I'm in a dungeon and run out.

I honestly don't see the point of cheating, or using exploits and glitches. Just takes the fun out of it for me. And still I have enough money to tell Tullius "Here's 500,000 septims. War's over, go home." Really, money is so easy to come by, one the Skyrim's DLC should be a Scrooge McDuck style Money Bin.

But the great thing about single player games like this is you can play however you want. So play how you want and have fun!

I have over a million gold pieces in this game. Totally useless.

Took a little while to save up for the 1st house I bought. But from there on, money has never been an issue.

Most of the perks to help you gain money in this game come way too late. Pretty much after it isn't needed anymore.

I have over 100 of each flawless gems too. Such a waste at this point in the game.

My first house on my most recent character was Vlindrel Hall, such an awesome house and not that much more then Breezehome. Gold is so easy to get that I was still carrying everything that I wanted to store in it before I bought it. Be it banish daggers or high-cost potions, gold is never a problem.

I did the same thing!! Cheating takes the fun out of the game. And money really isn't hard to come by once you build up your level a little.

Personally I don't like the fact that all houses are tied in towns. Being on a PC I got a mod for a safehouse outside. Underground lakehouse I think? It is good enough, and I don't have to worry about outstanding bounties and trips into town.

I'm not a fan of that myself, either. As a result, I'm compiling data with which to properly remove Halted Stream Camp from the radiant quests it's attached to and then clean it out (and up, the place is a mess), prior to reworking it a bit for use as my base.

If you are not actively clearing out dungeons and seeking bounties for loot, you will barely break even with just the crafting skills (which was pretty much all I did for my first run at the game), particularly at lower levels when your perks are at the minimum. If I were on a PC, I probably would have done the same on my first playthough.

I don't really like getting Breezehome early because it starts the main quest and brings out the random dragons. I like doing the stuff for the other factions first, usually.

If you follow Raalof from Helgen you get a free bed and some storage in Gedur's house in Riverwood right at the beginning. You can also join the College of Winterhold early for the free bed and storage in the Hall of Attainment. The Companions also have a free bed, but it's more like a Barracks and most of the storage by the bed is flagged as owned.

Like some of the other posters, I used the two barrels by the Warmaiden's in Whiterun to offload stuff to be sold and material to be crafted. I would have liked them to be closer to all the crafting tools, but it's close enough I guess. =p

Join the College it only cost 30 gold

What barrel is this? I've been looking for safe storage for a while now before I get houses...

I'd love an 'outside' house too. Goldenglow would be perfect and if Bethesda added a Smelter it'd be perfecter. As discussed in another thread we already have the deed and the storage containers are safe.

Exactly. It's not that I can't afford the house and furnishings it's that i DON'T WANT to afford the house and furnishings. I got better things to do with my money, and they owe me

I want the house before I do anything else. I travel right from Helgan and talk to the Jarl and Kill the dragon, then buy the house and upgrade it. It's not that I couldn't do it normally, I want to skip that part and just HAVE THE HOUSE already, and move on to the rest of the game.

You can get in for free if you tell wossername you're the Dragonborn.