Criteria: Increase in Living Expenses, Decrease in Gold Earning Potential, Difficulty Added to Gold Hoarding.

Gold Weight by KonanTenshi

First and foremost, gold weighs something. One must bring pouches and and bags in order to store lots of it. Coins are not a "light as air" as some people in the gaming community believe it is. (Looking at you developers.) Anyway, a few awesome and kind authors out there saw this huge oversight and has supplied us all with weight for gold coins. Thank you! Now it is necessary to stash your gold somewhere (and make sure it is safe) and/or purchase a horse to help you carry your treasures.

Trade and Barter by kryptopyr

Here we go. This makes the economy in Skyrim feel alive. No more does every single trader in every single town or village sell the same items at the same price. This mod changes all of the traders gold on hand based on where they work out of as well as alter the prices they sell their items for. For example, someone who you do business regularly with will offer better prices than someone who doesn't know you at all. Further, thanes get some extra recognition too. Plus, everything is 100% customizable. So, you play how you want.

Bounty Gold by gorey666

Kill a giant for a 100 gold? Really? Maybe a vanilla giant, but not one that has been enhanced from many of the mods on this list.  Bounty Gold let's you adjust how much gold you get as a bounty award for killing bandits and giants and dragons (oh my). This is a unique mod on our list because it let's you set proper rewards for taking down a giant or dragon now. After an hour long (real time) fight, you'll deserve more than 100 stupid septims.

Perseid's Inns and Taverns by perseid9

This mod does to taverns what Trade and Barter does to vendors. It will change up the cost of room rentals depending on location the inn is located. A crappy room in the Rift shouldn't cost the same as one of the more elaborate rooms in Solitude. Also, the prices are just different, but they are higher too. This makes it more difficult to afford a nice place to stay when starting out, which can lead up to some inconvenient circumstances when using encounter mods and survivalist mods.

NOTE: There are two version of this mod available. We prefer the "lite" version to ensure compatibility with other mods.

Gold Adjustment by kuertee

Isn't it weird how there are so many beggars in Skyrim? All they would have to do is go out of town for a day, and search under a tree to find tons of gold laying around. That's just stupid. This mod decreases gold from quests, from containers, and from anywhere else one might find gold. This makes saving up a bit more difficult, which it should be. Plus, now you can't be level 20 and buy all of Skyrim.

FUN FACT: Use this along with Bounty Gold to make for a more challenging game that still keeps appropriate rewards.

OUR RECOMMENDED SETTINGS: Set the Bounty Gold adjustment to 0 (to disable it). This allows Bounty Bold's settings to take full effect.


Investment Price by vinifera7

This is a good one to up the prices of all the types of property purchases in game. Houses will require you to actual save up for them and horses will be much more appreciated when you need to hand over 1000 hard earned septims for. This mod let's you multiply (or manually enter number if that is your thing) for the various homes and their upgrades, along with hirelings and horses.

FUN FACT: Use this along with Gold Adjustment to make gold more scarce and prices much higher to help offset Skyrim's broken economy.

Expensive Transports by svartberg

This mod nicely adds in what the above mods had left out--transportation costs. Now, you'll actually pay what it is worth for a driver to risk his life transporting your chicken hide to another town.

NOTE: In order to kick in, we noticed that you need to talk to and purchase a ride once first. (The higher price is deducted, but the menu option still shows the lower price.) After using a cart one time, the proper prices will show.


Money Sinks

Simple Taxes by Matthiasswag

A simple name for a simple mod. Skyrim's economy is sort of broken... And by "sort of" we mean shattered into a million little fragments which are broken into many more little fragments and any hope of repairing it is lost in an endless void of fragments that will cut you down to a puddle of blood if you were to even think about attempting to fix it. What we're saying is that by level 10 you can pretty much purchase the whole land of Skyrim. That's stupid. Matthiasswag had a brilliant idea that would actually have people using the word "tax" in positive way--which is a pretty amazing feet in and of itself. This mod permits lords to charge (you) tax for the various properties you own (including horses). So no more money hoarding; now if you want a house in every hold, you'll have to properly pay.

NOTE: There is also an alternative taxing mod that could function as an add-on, but we have not yet tested it.