InsaneJournal

So, in the game, coin is weightless. It doesn't matter how much you have, it doesn't affect your character's encumbrance.

However, we all know that if you put enough coins together in one place, they become a lot heavier. And just imagine trying to carry around 9,384 Septims with you all the time.

Carrying that much coin, in a "real life" sense, would be impractical, noisy, and annoying.

Sometimes in game, after one of my friends/travel companions die (I swear I didn't murder them), I get inheritance money. It's usually like 100 Septims and the note explains taxes have been taken off.

I know for a fact Markarth has a treasury house, even if it's attached to the Silver-Blood Family. But who's to say the other regions of Skyrim don't have their own treasury/vault house?

Every business in Skyrim has a ledger. That ledger has to go somewhere to report the profits made, and I'm pretty sure it goes to a treasury house. Like I said, in game, coin is weightless so there's really no need for a banking system but in a writing context, I'd like to believe that there's some sort of system in place for people that want to stash their gold, just not in their house.

Also, I believe the storage space would differ from person-to-person. I'll use the Black-Briar family and Adrienne Avenicci for an example, but first I want to explain how this works.

Headcanon

The crime in Skyrim is handled per Hold. I'm using this as an example.

If I, in broad daylight and with witnesses, steal a cabbage in Riften, I will have a bounty of 5 gold put on my head in the Rift. It's a small bounty for a head of cabbage, but it's a bounty, nonetheless.

If I mosey on over to Falkreath Hold and cross the border, the guards of the Rift cannot arrest me for petty thievery, anymore, because I am in new jurisdiction.

And since I have no bounty in Falkreath Hold, I am now the "proud owner" of a head of cabbage, even though I definitely stole that head of cabbage. If I eat this cabbage or sell it to a fence (a person that buys stolen goods, not a literal wooden fence), the guards of The Rift cannot get that cabbage back, but I still have a bounty on my head in that Hold and I can either pay that 5 gold to make up for the cabbage, or I can serve a day in Riften Jail because I'm a dirty, rotten cabbage thief.

Onto the point...

Similar to the "Cabbage Fiasco" above, if I put 500 Septims into the vault house of Riften, the people of Falkreath's vault house will not know about that 500 Septims. Not their bank, not their business. They don't care if I have 5,000 Gold in Riften. If I want funds to draw from in Falkreath, I'm going to have to start a fund in Falkreath.

Everybody that starts an "account" with any of these banks gets a key to access their strongbox/chest/safe/vault, whatever.

Now. Here's where the Black-Briars and Adrienne Avenicci come in.

The Black-Briar family (more specifically, Maven) are an affluential and wealthy Nord family in Riften. Maven owns her family business, Black-Briar Mead. She owns two buildings in the city- her mead brewery, and her family home. She lives with two of her three grown children– Hemming and Ingun. Her other son Sibbi is in jail. Her house is decent-sized. A family like the Black-Briars, with all that lucrative revenue? They'd probably need a vault room.

As for Adrienne Avenicci, she's an Imperial woman who runs Warmaiden's in Whiterun and she's the daughter of the Jarl's steward, Proventus. She's technically nobility, but she's a simple woman. She doesn't care for a big, flashy house. She just wants to spend time with her husband Ulfberth and run her business. She and Ulfberth own their home, and Warmaiden's is run out of their ground floor, while they sleep upstairs in the bedroom area. Since they're constantly exchanging coin for goods and vice versa, they'd more likely have a chest.

Skyrim does not have anything in the way of rentals, unless you count the inns. The inns provide rooms to sleep in for 10 Septims, and you can rent that room as long as you've got the coin for it. Other than that, anybody who has a home in Skyrim owns their home.

Exchanging / Money Notes

Having thousands of coins would be straight-up messy in a vault. So, there's got to be a way to track currency and still keep things orderly and clean.

In the game, 1 gold ingot is worth 100 Septims. Merchants, townspeople, and adventurers can bring in their coin to deposit. Instead of putting all those coins in their safe of choice, they can instead translate gold into ingots.

My Dragonborn is a bit of a frugal spender. He spends his money on what he needs, or for the sake of convenience.

In the earlier days, when he was made Thane of Whiterun, he wanted to buy Breezehome - the house located in the Plains District of Whiterun. Counting all the cleaning and furnishings, the house costs a total of 6,300 Septims.

Most of the houses in Skyrim cost upward of that amount. It'd be exhausting to carry that much gold to the Steward, however.

So, this is where notaries come in. To authorize a large withdrawal by a second party from your vault/"account", you could write out a "check" for a certain amount to the person/business in question, and the notary would be there to verify your identity and "stamp" the document (likely with a wax seal with the Whiterun sigil).

Also, just as coins can be traded for ingots, ingots can be traded for coin purses. Every time someone brings in a considerable amount of coin to be "changed" into gold ingots, the coin is counted and sorted into coin purses, usually 25 to 50 coins per bag.

My Dovahkiin's Situation

Right after he bought Breezehome and got it to "living condition", money was a bit tight for a while because he spent literally most of the gold he had, but now he has a place (multiple, actually) to store his belongings, instead of having to sell off everything to a merchant.

I think, because he doesn't spend all that much money, he'd need a vault, after a while. He'd start out with a chest, but eventually he would move to a larger vault when the chest wasn't enough. He has at least a chest in every Hold, and that is where he stores his coin he gets from selling off loot he picks up. He keeps his main vault in Whiterun, mainly because it's a central location in Skyrim and basically the seat of all commerce.

Whenever he needs to buy something in whichever town, he makes a withdrawal from his stash funds for however much gold he needs or gets a bank note to give for the withdrawal.

I had another funny idea, and it's a bit ridiculous but it was too amusing to not mention, so here it is.

I was imagining perhaps he keeps a "stash chest" at the Throat of the World, where Paarthurnax lives. He wouldn't even keep it there because of Paarthurnax. To get to the Throat of the World, you have to have a very specific Thu'um or you can't reach the summit. Nobody can get to the summit without the Dragonborn or the Greybeards because the winds on the way up are dangerous because of how fast and cold they are.

It's the most secure banking location in the world but it's tedious to get to (to say the very least) and it's not even actively guarded by the dragon that just-so-happens to live up there. Though if you did somehow manage to get up there to steal his shit, he'd probably laugh, congratulate you for being clever, and let you take the stuff, anyway.

And then blow you off the side of the mountain.

I mean... what?