By level 20 I had enough money to buy Proudspire manor with all its upgrades on the spot. This even if avoided collecting the myriad of iron/steel/ancient weapons left by enemies and all the ingredients which are worth close to nothing.

By level 30 I stopped collecting potions, apparel worth less than 300 and weapons/armors worth less than 500

By level 40 I ignored everything that's worth less than 1000

I'm on my way to level 50, I have 150000 gold coins (and spent at least as much) and my speechcraft has reached level 60 only by trading.

Economy, again, is broken.

I think this boils down to:
-Ancient weapons sells for too much. Old, rusty blades should ony be employed in smelters, not traded.
-Every damn urn contains some coin and this amount goes up with level.
-Every damn skeleton, Draugr also contains some random amount of gold
-Too many chests left around
-Enchanted items cost too much in relation to the usefulness of the enchantment.
-Traders pay too much for used wares

Ok

I was not boasting my skills. Actually, I think it's quite frustrating I had to give up one of my favorite activities (exploring ruins and looting) because getting rich is so easy.

It's extremely easy. My stats on my first char show I gathered something like 460,000 coins over the course of his playtime. That's enough for all the houses (and upgrades to them) in the game at least three times over.

There should be a gambling mini game like betting on wolf fights or something, just so that we have an entertaining money dump.
Or even better allow us to run a sort of pit fighting arena and force us to buy animals at exuberant prices !
5000 septims for a cave bear, 20000 for a wisp mother and watch them fight !

Call dragon shout.......

How do you make so much money? I struggle to make money on all my playthroughs except my current one which is a merchant. Other than him, I don'thave much money on an other character

I ran out of things to buy. My crafted weapons are better , every thing is Legandary. But I still keep collecting, looking for unique items mostly now, and am selective about what I will pick up. But still run the caves just for fun !!

I had 40000 when I was level 30 and then I spent it on houses and other stuff

Another problem is that there is nothing to buy. You get excessive amounts of money and have nothing to do with it.

I'm a collector, my main character's house in Whiterun has one of pretty much every generic weapon and armour piece in the game up to ebony and glass, looted not crafted, only missing solitude guard armour set, I think... And my character did have 100,000 gold until I went on a house and horse buying spree. He's lvl 51 and currently running at ~45,000 in his pocket. Have stopped looting corpses of pretty much anything but arrows, gold and jewels, and potions. Still pick up enchanted items, as there is no way to check which enchantments I know, and which I don't. To level smithing I just make daggers as they are low price... However to max out my character level I am buying a lot of training now, so that should keep him being overburdened by his wealth...

(a suggestion to get rid of money and train speechcraft is to sell stuff buy it back and sell it again, repeat as necessary, as you will make a loss each time...)

You have some valid points, but I must disagree with this:
Many of the ingredients have a weight of 0.1 and will still sell for 1 gold. That's a 10:1 ratio and, unlike other items with that ratio, you can get full price (not to mention that selling them individually boosts Speech considerably).
My latest run through made most of her cash early on by picking every flower she saw and completely ignoring all normal weapons and armor found as loot.

I concur. (Is that how you spell the word "concur?

I spend all my money on arrows, filled soul gems to recharge weapons and lockpicks.

There is one thing you can dump hundreds of thousands of gold on, skill trainers. Other than that there anything worth buying outside of soulgems/deadra hearts which dont cost much anyways and ingredients which are dirt cheap,

http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/649874715367704855/99AB526246544F28CD160DF23866DE9E69CB6FEF/

Well I'll admit I'm one of those compulsive collectors that needs to make and hoard one of every armor set, weapon set, homes etc. available in the game. But why am I getting the feeling you've got a gold coin collection fetish?

Seriously, assuming you didn't use cheats you:

1. own every house possible,

2. completed ALL the factions/miscellaneous/favor quests in addition to the MQ,

3. spent money in training with ALL of the 50 journeyman, expert and master trainers in the realm in order to max your perks in all 18 skills possible to improve your character

4. Spent money is learning every single potion recipie, spell tome, enchantment you could possibly buy from merchants

5. Fully decorated each of your homes with at least one of each armor/weapon sets (all at legendary level)

and yet still have that much cash flow????

Well here's what I'd recommend: either 1) reduce the amount of dungeon crawling you do with your non-questing activity, 2) stop looting the corpses you create from all your dungeon crawling activities or 3) create your own mods to go on a shopping spree

I hate to go back to Morrowind...but...
I was difficult in Morrowind to begin with to amass much gold.
I agree, Skyrim is too easy.

Yeh, its way too easy to make cash.... By the way, my Speechcraft is 79 from all the stuff I've sold, and I just can't find people with enough cash to make max profit. The only reason I haven't gotten the achievement is because I don't feel like waiting for stores to restock to sell all my junk and I used a bunch to level Enchanting to 100.

I don't get what people are talking about too much gold, and nothing to spend it on. I'm 37, my total gold found is about 300k and I only have 30k. There must be something your not spending coin on. I manage to spend 2-10k on training every level.

Yeah I never have more than 10k on me at once because I buy everything and dont make any of my supplies

the economy is fine..you're suppose to be able to get rich its a fantasy game...you want it like how obsidian does it, give most enemies a lead pipe so there is nothing to loot? or an dead game world with nothing in it to loot?...looting, exploring, killing enemies and getting their gear to sell is part of the fantasy game...i have 50 grand and i own 2 houses and have tons of gear but its fun to work up to that...you don't start the game with it...you have to accumulate it.

What the hell is your playstyle that you have that much money and think there's nothing to spend it on? I'll agree that I don't purchase many weapons, armor, etc, but the most money I've ever had without actively trying to make money, is 30k. And that was around level 55. If you're just blindly smithing, enchanting, and selling everything, well, good for you, but that's...not really an adventure though, is it?

Between Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, Morrowind's economy was BY FAR the most broken. A level one character could stroll in to a shop, bribe the merchant to 100 disposition, and then proceed to buy items at a lower price than he sold them back.

You could also head to the Creeper and get full price for everything. There were items worth 160,000 gold and you could get every penny of that trading with Creeper. Seriously everything in Morrowind may as well have been free.

Yea i'm level 74 with 700k+ wealth (not on me but in total i've had) I have 400k on me and i just bought EVERY spell and i buy lockpicks poitons ebony ignots every ignot etc etc etc not much to do with all that money :S