And I wonder, what should I use them for?

I have a house. I have a horse. I have good armor. I have good weapons. And I have a fully armored follower.

What's the point on saving up gold when I don't have anything to use it for? Sure, I could give a beggar a coin 30,000 times, but then I'd also expect them to buy a house in Solitude and invite me over for dinner. Sadly, I know that wouldn't happen.

In the last few days alone I've seen countless people asking this question. My suggestion? Browse through some of the threads and you'll find your answer.

i think there's a money achievment too

I always find stuff to buy, various potions I can't make (e.g. potion of ultimate health). Buy/find all the enchants possible, you can use enchanting without putting perks into it. Buy all the other houses?

I just replied on a similar topic, but I will again. There is no motivation to even loot bodies after awhile. Some outrageously priced, super enchanted items at the vendors shops would have been nice.

Just train everything.

I found myself thinking the same after I finished the Thieves' Guild questline and realized I could have done a Scrooge McDuck dive into the pile of gold I had. I started training skills I rarely use (like pickpocket) to see if the higher perks are interesting enough to play with. When you have truly stupid amounts of gold, even this doesn't make a dent due to the 5 trainings/level cap.

Train everything to 100.

Or just drop in the middle of a city surely someone would pick it up......

Well if they had a Gambling system where you could always find better items than ones found or crafted, then gold would have a purposeful sink.

The answer to your question is nothing. Gold does not matter in Skyrim.

See how high you can make your money pile?
That's what I'm currently doing.

EDIT: virtual money pile that is, as gold can't be dropped.

Yeah, this is one area I've always been disappointed with TES games. I really hoped that Skyrim would break the mold in this case, but didn't. It's always been the case that, after a little while, you've bought a couple houses, you've gotten the armor, enchantments, and spells you want, most of the stuff you need you craft yourself with only modest costs for crafting, and you have nothing to spend your mad loot on. In Oblvion, you usually reached this point very fast once you'd levelled to the point where there are deadra in daedra armor/weapons, and bandits/necromancers/etc with glass, ebony, and daedric armor and weapons every where you go. Even with almost no mercantile, that stuff has such a high base price that you'll max out the vendors' gold, and have 100k gold in a few hours.

I actually stopped playing Skyrim over the holidays (I was away from home for about a week and a half, and got nostalgic for Oblivion when I got back home), and am planning on starting back up, maybe this weekend, but it appears that to the extent I played already (and from everything I've seen on the forums) that this still is the case in TES V.

You could always go on the hunt for unique items that are sold in shops, buy them, and then put them on display, or equip them. That's what I always do

Train on stuff that you won't do with your character... that'll drain you REAL FAST!

I had 600k beginning last week. I started reverse pickpocketing 1k gold into every stormcloak and called it their salary. Now I'm down to 400k.

Get 100,000 gold for achievment. The just remove it via Console commands so your poor.

agreed ! To be compettive with what you can enchant yourself, it would have to be godly items with an outrageously high price (25 000 gold ?), as you mentionned ! I wish there was a few of those for every class.

Buy everything an armor vendor has. Sell it back to them at a loss. Repeat until broke. Might raise your Speech a little bit as well.

i own three houses and maintain a balance of around 120,000 gold -- to no good purpose.
But it beats being poor.

Wellwell, let's not get so high-spirited! I have probably more than 600K after clearing almost every dungeon in the game.

You didn't read the whole thread then?.

You can't drain money with training, you can only train five times, then you have to level up on your own, then you train for five more. So in the time in between training sessions you'll make back what you spent on the training.

Ahahaha. I like this idea!

I've bought every house in the game at this point. I don't bother looting low level foes anymore, and seldom pick up anything but very high end gear. Somehow, my money is back up to about 50,000 again, and climbing fast.

I wish it was that easy in real life.

It is. Go out onto the streets and murder people. take their cash and rob their houses. You'll get rich quickly, but probably jailed for life.

I don't think the player should be allowed to loot corpses except for unique items or quest-specific items.

just another option beth has dropped from their game. all the things i can't do is really starting to annoy me.

i loved dropping my cash all over my house and bed in fallout3.