Anyone else notice how merchants don't carry much money in the game? It seems I have to go to multiple merchants and/or cities to sell all my crap most of the time. My character is only level 18 at the moment and I don't know if merchants start carrying more money at higher levels.

To curb this, I started holding on to all alchemy ingredients, enchanted weapons and armor, and other useful things. If I decide to pick up those skills later, I will have a pretty solid amount of material to start with, which is more valuable than the gold you'd get.

Seems pretty realistic to me.

You can unlocked a perk in speech I think that gives every merch +1k gold. Other than that, I'm level 34 right now, they all hold between 400-900 gold.

I disenchant all the items I can and use all my ingredients for alchemy. I dunno Belethor's General Goods in Whiterun the guy only has 500g after each reset. Oh well will just keep throwing stuff in my house and selling it as I can.

I never have enough to sell at any one time so their gold resets between selling trips. and like ReliantLion does, I hold on to magic equipment and things I may use later.

Have a look in the Speech perks...it has a couple available to help with this problem.

But do you want to be rich, or survive?

Ever since level 15 or so blacksmiths have had around 1100 gold while general merchants have about 750. However if you need more(like I feel I do) there are perks in speech that increase the money stores have.