Have you thought about donating only half your wealth to the "help with restartitis" fund?

Thanks. Always nice to see someone else who appreciates obscure references to classic literature writers.

Terrible affliction that is. I will consider it.

I want merchants to have more money.

My character Enesia is an archeologist. He's a treasure hunter, he goes to ancient barrows, caves, does quest of legends, and study ancients worlds.

He wants to sell his goods, but the merchants don't have enough money when he does find a city. Some treasure hunter if he cannot sell his stuff to be super wealthy. Then he gives all his money to beggars or waste it on magic training.

limit your looting, best way to stay poor.

Buy all the houses and furnishings, build the hearthfire houses buying all the mats from vendors (that will set ya back)

Buy horses every time you see a stable ( of course that may be needed if ya keep getting yours killed... just saying. Who'd have thunk bbq sause spilled on a steed would attract dragons)

Buy precious gems from belathor, that will keep you poor.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions, I'm really stoked for my next playthrough now. I think the best thing to do is what some of you said to limit your looting based on what you could realistically carry. And I will also do my thought of not looting tombs, because of my respect for my ancestors. I don't like just buying lots of things I don't need or just dumping my gold because why would my character do that? There's got to be a reason I can role play, although I guess I could "lose" some gold here and there. I done that when I've found a weapon that was too powerful and it spoiled my fun, I left it on a corpse and pretended I'd lost it during the battle or it broke.

I'm also going to stop levelling before exotic equipment becomes available, so there will be a lot less enchanted weapons and armour to sell.

Or simply never picking up gold.

It's (almost) completely useless in Skyrim. Everything you'd ever need could be potential found on a dead body or a chest.

So far this is working well (not looting tombs or picking up anything heavy). I'm at level twelve and what with hiring mercs and buying postions I'm broke all the time.

Its awesome!