We've been often told not to bother buying weapons because we can pick them up for free as rewards or loot in our quests. And I agree with that, my good weapons came free. If that is the case, on what items or activities do you put your gold into? Skyrim doesn't seem to be the place to splurge... Thanks for your thoughts!

training and building a hearthfire home

I spend my money on beer and wenches...

I just buy Nord Mead, Sweetrolls and all crafting supplies.

Back when I played Skyrim, I recall always buying smithing materials.

I spend cash on smithing stuff, soul gems, ebony arrows, ingredients, and training.

Nearly always smithing materials and maybe the occasional "special" potion.

Probably the most expensive thing I spend money on is filled grand soul gems. I also buy alchemy ingredients and smithing materials but I also buy weapons, armor and potions depending on if my character is doing any smithing or potion making in the first place. An elven sword is a tempting buy if I haven't found one yet.

Once I buy all the houses/properties and HF homes are complete, I start buying up ingredients, food, soul gems, and ingots to start filling up the houses. Any training I need I'll go and do them and I even start paying mercs more gold than the standard 500 gold fee. Sometimes, they might get too charitable and give money beggars who they feel deserve it. Finally, my Harbinger/Arch Mage PCs pay a Companion/CoW Mage several thousand gold for adventuring.

Lots of ways to waste gold

Potions and training, anything is else is a waste of money.

M'aiq puts most of his gold in Nazeem's Mogrul's pocket.

Home purchase and crafting materials is probably what I spend my money on. I usually craft my own armor and weapons.

I make my own weapons and armor and buy/sell only what I need. It keeps the economy much more realistic.

I end up spending my gold on training, Hearthfire, supplies, and crafting materials. I'm consistently broke, so the game is really enjoyable in that respect.

Training. Other than that there isn't really anything meaningful to spend money on. I wish there was though.

M'aiq suggests giving your gold to Mogrul.

Training and buying and furniting a house.

And also the occasional material for a crafting proffesion.

Unique items that you can only get from a specific merchant from a specific hold, most likely portaining to the hold.......oh....

wait we're talking about Skyrim.

Nothing. Money is worth nothing in Skyrim. Seriously I'm the richest mage.

-Why buy Soul Gems when I enchant and Soul Trap anyway

-Why buy Generic Staves I get as loot anyway

Not only that, but the merchants svck as merchants. They never gain enough money unless you buy their inventory. Their own economy never goes up and down. They never have enough money as I do.

I'm starting to think that maybe my mage needs to setup his own merchant shop and show them how its done

-Let the hero gain money slower, so he can try to acheive some really expensive equipment and mock him on his adventures of how he can't get this ridiculously high priced Adventurer's Staff

Maybe that concept slowed with the loss of spell-crafting.

As a mage, I'm constantly spending gold on soul gems, spells, and training. I almost never have more than 7 - 8k gold on me at any one time, and I'm level 30.

Pretty much as others have said...

Housing, crafting materials when needed, maybe some training.

Piling them, so I have something to swim in.

Hearthfire homes, a good money pit!

Training, and smithing materials. I also like to buy armour if there's something I really want that the merchant has. It breaks my heart to say this, but gold is kind of useless.

Kill Al by throwing my sack of gold at him.

Or if it's already too heavy for me to lift, i just bribe him to go away for another couple of thousand years.