Looting and selling. Any kind of valuable weapon or armor you find in dungeons or caves, whether you need it or not, pick it up and take it with you. Next time you're in town sell all the unwanted items.

If you're interested in free houses and furnishings there's a quick and easy trick you can do. When talking to the Steward sprint into them and it will cause them to stumble backwards. Push them near a storage container. Get them close enough so you can talk to the steward and and access the container. Talk to the Steward and buy the house or furnishing you want. Quickly exit out of the conversation and dump your gold into the container. The Steward takes a second to say something before taking any gold so this gives you time to dump it. Without any gold in your inventory there will be none for them to take. Grab your gold back out of the container and do this again on any house or furnishing you see fit. Now you have a house and possibly all the furnishing at no cost. I've done this with my character I use to mess around in the game and I bought both Breezehome in Whiterun and Proudspire Manor in Solitude doing this, so I know it does work. I haven't had any repercussions at all from doing this. I recommend saving right before doing this in case you mess up.

So there's a little trick to help you save money.

I agree that it is still very easy to earn gold in Skyrim, especially during the period of training enchanting, alchemy and smithing.

My character is level 81. I bought all house and upgrade, invested all merchant; I keep buying arrow, ingot, alchemy ingredient and ultimate potion, but then I still have 600k+ gold.

I so wish that I can use my money to defeat Black-Briar and Silver-Blood family in business and relieve all people from slavery.

yea my thiefs like that, ive got 100 speec now, legitimately, and have bougt every house in the game, bought my way to 100 alchemy, upgraded every house and boughth 5 skills at a trainer every level starting at about level 25, without ever taking my money back from them. im in my 50's now with over 200k gold. it just flows. its very easy being master of the theives guild because i can travel to markarth fence to windelm fence to tg fence and then back to markarth fence and hes reset so i can just sell everything given some time. according to my stats screen ive found 722634 gold over the course of my career. most i ever carried at one time was 209746 which is what im currently carrying.

but granted thats only my thief character. most others i play that dont have access to fences are much lower because i dont have teh patience to go from 700 gold vendor to 700 gold vendor for hours to sell off everything i pick up.

I don't even check urns and draugers because they give crap gold, except when I'm like 40+ when every drauger drops ebony weapons. I've never had more than 100k (and that was specifically for the trophy) but I'd have spent 400k+ on one playthrough. Use it for leveling instead of just hoarding and then complaining about it. Houses are a good money sink. If you do stuff like sell iron daggers with banish enchantments, then that's your own fault for doing that...also if you use a container to buy houses while keeping the money. Even works for upgrades, except for upgrading the dark brotherhood sanctuary.

yes. yes it is.

I tried to sink gold into trainers, but I always end up with exactly the same amount I started with after pickpocketing my gold back from them

I can rarely get my money back. Even with 5/5 light fingers + the 50% easier gold perk, it usually says 0% chance even when I'm not spotted...so I just kill them instead

How much gol

How much gold are you looting? I'm only successful if I train once then steal, and repeat 5 times.

I've heard there is a bug with the light fingers/fortify pickpocketing where your percentages actually start to go down as it approaches really high numbers. I never did put more than one into light fingers, and haven't used fortify pickpocketing enchants or potions, so I can't confirm. I found pickpocketing to be ABSURDLY easy to level - much moreso than smithing even. It's the only skill I've gotten to 100, and I wasn't trying to power level it, rather just make some gold and learn some enchants by stealing all the jewelry I could find on townspeople.

I like having surplus gold. Now I can just quest and explore without bothering with vendor rounds and looting everything.

When your level for the skill you're trying to raise is over 50 it costs about 1500 gold to train. I can never pickpocket that much gold. Even with a pickpocket skill in the 90 range, the majority of the perks and an enchanted ring, gloves and necklace all with fortify pickpocket skill. It's no problem training a skill before level 50 and stealing my gold back because it's only like 500 gold. I have the perk that gives you a better chance to pickpocket the target when they're sleeping and I still can't get all my gold back. Even when training one level at a time.

If I had several hundred thousand gold I would fill the empty room upstairs in Herjim full of ebony ingots. I wonder how many it takes...

I have about 3,000 on the level 20 I'm playing right now, but I did just buy Vlindrel Hall & the upgrades.

I stopped looting for the most part at level 40ish. I still open fancy chests, and peek at dead bandit chiefs for their magic items but really my enjoyment of the game skyrocketed after I not longer worried about hauling loot.

It is pretty silly having unlimited gold though. We're richer than the damned emperor by level 50.

the chance goes down the more gold they have, so if yyou dump 5k into them yyou wont be able to steal it back unless you use the paralyze spell glitch. otherwise you can just pickpocket it back after each point you spend on them. i think it started to get really low like 24% at like 2k gold. so youll have to buy 1 skill, pickpocket take it back, buy second skill, pickpocket back etc till you get your 5/5

or just be a man and let it go, i honestly never missed any of it. theres nothing to buy anyways.

I stopped looking for loot after I completed the DB and TG questlines. I still have far over 300000 to toss around :\

I would enjoy being able to spend 100,000 to 200,000 gold (or so) to repair/upgrade Windhelm to look decent... For being one the oldest settlements in Tamriel, Windhelm sure is a dung heap, and that's BEFORE I sacked it with the Imperial Legion.